SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #602 (0), Tuesday, September 12, 2000
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TITLE: Dorenko Program Has Plug Pulled
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr. and Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - ORT yanked Sergei Dorenko, its outspoken anchor and a close Boris Berezovsky ally, off the air over the weekend in a sign that the Kremlin was closing its grip over the channel.


Berezovsky had last week declared that he was handing over his 49-percent ORT stake in trust to a group of 14 journalists and intellectuals - Dorenko included - over what he claimed was a Kremlin threat to clamp down on press freedom. 

The government owns the controlling 51-percent stake in the station.

ORT general director Konstantin Ernst told Dorenko, who is also deputy director of the station, just hours before broadcast Saturday that the analytical program was being pulled from the evening lineup.

Ernst said in a statement that Dorenko had refused to keep quiet about Berezovsky's decision to hand over his stake, and the "emotional tension surrounding the situation threatens ORT's normal work."

But Dorenko, who had just the weekend before fiercely lashed out at President Vladimir Putin over his handling of the Kursk submarine disaster, said Monday that it was Putin who had ordered Ernst to take his program off the air.

"If you know the logic of bureaucrats, they always wait until he [Putin] waves his hand," Dorenko said at a news conference.

Dorenko said he lost his show because he had steadfastly refused to ally himself with Putin, which would have meant the anchorman could no longer air criticisms of the president and his allies.

The journalist said he met with Putin at least four times since September 1999. At their most recent meeting on Aug. 29, Putin said he had broken all ties with Berezovsky and asked the ORT anchor for his support, Dorenko said. 

Berezovsky is widely believed to have played a large role in plucking Putin from relative obscurity last year and propelling him to the Kremlin. Dorenko himself helped boost Putin's rising star last year by broadcasting a series of scathing reports about one-time presidential contenders such as former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

Dorenko, who turned the president down, said his determination to continue airing critical reports about the Kremlin and not his "friendly relations" with Berezovsky led to his show being canceled.

Dorenko bitterly called the loss of his show a blow against freedom of speech, but defiantly pledged to continue producing the program. He has retained his seat as deputy director at ORT.

"We will continue to do everything as if we were allowed to go back on the air," he said. 

Talks are under way with executives at TV-6, a second-tier channel owned by Berezovsky, according to Russian press reports.

Although banned from the air, Dorenko released last Saturday's program on his Web site (www.dorenko.ru) to an audience no doubt considerably smaller than the 40 million viewers that he claims regularly tune into his television show.

On the show, Dorenko was planning a somewhat low-key commentary on Berezovsky's decision to give up his stake, and a rehash of allegations published in the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung last week that the Kursk was sunk by a missile shot from a Russian warship.

Dorenko got some support Sunday from a one-time foe, NTV television anchor and general director Yevgeny Kiselyov. 

"Taking him off the air is undoubtedly an act of censorship, of government interference [into editorial affairs], against which we will always speak up," Kiselyov said.

However, many observers had seen Dorenko as a mouthpiece for Berezovsky, and they welcomed his ouster.

"It is better sooner than never," said Alexei Pankin, editor of the Sreda media magazine. "It's too bad that it takes pressure from the Kremlin to get the right decision from [ORT] management."

Dorenko has followed a bumpy career path at ORT. His ins and outs from the station have served in past years as an indicator of Berezovsky's relationship with the government. 

Berezovsky said last week that a threat from presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin had led him to decide to transfer his shares. He said Vo lo shin demanded that he give up his shares to the state or "follow in the steps of [Media-MOST founder Vla di mir] Gusinsky." Gusinsky was briefly arrested in July in what was seen as a flap over his NTV television's criticism of the Kremlin.

The transfer of his 49-percent stake would help protect ORT's freedom, Berezovsky said.

The Dorenko fray comes as ORT undergoes a month-long reshuffling. Ernst sacked two executives close to Be rezovsky - Tatyana Koshkaryova and Rustam Narzikulov - last month. And last week, the former deputy director of the state-owned VGTRK television and radio giant, Sergei Goryachev, was appointed head of the politically sensitive news department.

Dorenko acknowledged Monday that he has a fight ahead of him if he wants to get his voice on the air again. And if that bid fails, he might just go into politics, Dorenko said without elaborating.

But the bespectacled anchorman reckons his chances are good for resurfacing on television since he has already lost his program three times - most recently in December 1998 after a war of words with the Kremlin - and bounced back.

"I will come back now or 20 years or 2,000 years from now," Dorenko vowed.

TITLE: Cemetery for Fallen German Soldiers Opened
AUTHOR: By Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: German and Russian veterans gathered at a small village near St. Petersburg on Saturday to mark to opening of a war cemetery for German soldiers who were killed in World War II.


The five-hectare burial site was chosen by the German War Graves Association, which scouted various cemeteries with the unmarked graves of German soldiers in Russia before deciding on So logubovka, located about 70 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg.

The remains of soldiers from smaller burial sites in the region were also collected and buried at Sologubovka.

At the opening, German veterans wandered among the graves looking for relatives and friends. One man, Kurz Willie, fought in the area in 1943. "There were 20 of us in my unit, all of us were 18 years old," he said, struggling to keep back tears. "Sixteen of us died." Another woman, Helga Ortner, was pointing joyfully at a name on the memorial: "I have found my husband's brother," she said.

Sologubovka is now the resting place of 20,000 soldiers, around half of whom have been identified. It is estimated that up to 80,000 will be buried here when the cemetery is completed, making it the largest war cemetery in Russia.

Russia has a total of 89 cemeteries for foreign soldiers, containing the remains of an estimated 400,000 people, according to a Reuters report on Monday. Germany alone lost up to 5 million on Soviet soil during World War II.

"In 1943, when we were being chased by the German Army, we went through this area," recalled Russian veteran Valentin, 75, who did not give his last name. "I remember a huge German cemetery on this spot, with graves marked by crosses made of birch."

The land on which the cemetery rests is the property of the Orthodox Church, which was thanked at the opening ceremony by Karl-Wilhelm Lange, president of the German War Graves Association, and by Germany's ambassador to Russia, Dr. Ernst Jorg von Studnitz.

There is also a Garden of Peace nearby, as well as a Church of the Assumption, being restored with funds from the War Graves Association as a gesture of reconciliation. 

"I consider it right that the restoration of the church is carried out by a German organization, because Germans destroyed it during the war," said a woman who identified herself only as Zinaida Vasiliyevna, 70, and who said she lived in Sologubovka before 1941. 

The church's basement served as a hospital for the German Army; it will now be used as an exhibition room documenting the names of those who died in the Leningrad region in one of World War II's grimmest episodes, the Lenin grad Blockade. It will also house books on the war that feature the stories of those who fought and died in the area.

Also present were members of a youth-exchange program set up by the War Graves Association, involving youngsters from St. Petersburg and Hamburg.

"We prepared wreaths and laid them on the graves of Russian soldiers at the Sinyavinskiye Vysoty memorial," said Susannes Sommerschuh and Wenke Roehner, referring to the nearby Soviet war cemetery where the official opening ceremony began.

Wolfgang Lengert, a teacher of social and political sciences in Germany, brought 12 of his students to see the cemetery. "I do not have relatives buried here - my father died near Stalingrad," he said. "But for me, a cemetery is what war is really about, so I came to show my students the face of war."

Not all the Russians present were in a mood for reconciliation, however. 

"I am offended by the fact that the people who were defeated in the war are building their cemeteries on our land and giving us humanitarian aid," said one Russian veteran.

But the event's organizers shrugged off suggestions that Russians - who lost more than 20 million people during World War II - were uneasy about such a large cemetery for their former enemy.

"The local population is positive about the establishment of a German cemetery," said the general director of the Russian War Memorial Association, Alexander Bystritsky.

TITLE: U.S. Surgeons Work From the Heart
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "Are you ready?" asked a Russian cardiologist of his American counterpart. "Yes," came the reply - and the 10th Heart to Heart program was underway, as a dozen doctors and nurses - and one interpreter - prepared to perform an angioplastic operation at St. Petersburg's Municipal Hospital No. 2.


American cardiologists and cardiac surgeons have arrived in the city to conduct a week-long series of free heart operations, the first of which took place on Monday. In all, the Americans will perform between 10 and 15 operations, and consult on a further 60, as part of a program that began in 1989.

"It's not only humanitarian effort which we are giving from our hearts," said cardiac surgeon J. Nilas Young, the president and founder of the Heart to Heart project, before the first operation - off limits to journalists but open to the cameras - was performed.

"We also receive rewarding experience here in Russia. We teach and we learn." 

The Heart to Heart International Children's Medical Alliance, located in Oakland, California, was set up in 1989 as a charitable foundation to help children with heart problems in Russia. It began when Joann McGowan, an American art specialist, came to St. Petersburg to organize a film festival. The woman interpreting for her had a daughter with heart disease, so McGowan went to Young to see if he could help.

Young performed the operation for free, but both he and McGowan saw that individual cases would do little to alleviate the situation. Young and some of his colleagues decided to set up the Heart to Heart foundation. The program then grew to embrace adults. 

The foundation, which provides medical equipment to a number of poor countries, is funded primarily by donations from private citizens and U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

Alexander Sokolovsky, head doctor of Municipal Hospital No. 2, said that of the roughly 300,000 people in St. Petersburg suffering from heart disease of one form or another, "between 8,000 to 10,000 annually need surgery."

"But only 1,000 of those actually have surgery, because the government cannot give us the money we need."

With some people on a two- to three-year waiting list, the American contribution is welcome, he said. The operations that will be conducted in Heart to Heart altogether cost around $42,000, and are in addition to the 200 surgeries carried out by doctors at the hospital this year.

Over a decade, Heart to Heart has provided surgery to almost 300 patients, and ECG studies and diagnoses to thousands more. 

While most of the necessary equipment the American doctors are using was brought with them, Alexander Zo rin, head of cardiac surgery at the hospital, said that Russian and American doctors were a lot closer on the fundamentals of the surgery than even a year ago. This is thanks in part to meetings of the two sides at numerous conferences and symposia on the subject, he said.

Zorin added, however, that minor differences remained.

"Sometimes, it can just be that an American surgeon holds a surgical instrument in a different way," he said. "But those minor details can be very important." 

Jennifer Castner, technical manager of Heart to Heart, said that in Russia American cardiologists can learn how to perform heart operations faster and more simply. 

"Owing to a lack of money and equipment, Russian doctors are very creative," Castner said. "They manage to do many things without the complicated technical devices which we use in America." 

Zorin agreed, although not without regret. 

"For instance, for operations we have to use artificial blood-circulation systems which are meant to be disposable, [but] we invented a special sterilizing [system] that allows for the multiple use of this device," he said.

"Or when we have a lack of special surgery threads, we just tie together leftover strands and use that."

Castner also said that American doctors come across more complicated cases of heart disease in Russia than at home, which was often interesting professionally. "The reason for this is that, in America, people usually don't have to wait for two years to be operated on, and heart diseases don't get into advanced stages as they do here," she said.

Zorin said that the patients who went under the American knife were not chosen by any financial pecking order.

"The patients we offered to our colleagues attention all have very difficult problems," he said. "We didn't select them according to any social factors. The only thing that mattered was the condition of their health."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gay March Banned


n MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) - Belarussian authorities banned a gay and lesbian march in the ex-Soviet state's capital Minsk on Friday, saying the organizers had failed to ask permission in time.

The ruling by the city government was swiftly criticized by gay groups, who said it was an example of the country's anti-homosexual policies. They said gays and lesbians would stage striptease shows in nightclubs in place of the march.

Eduard Tarletsky, head of the Belarussian league of gays and lesbians, said the move reflected widespread prejudice in Belarus, which has been criticized by the West for a poor democratic track record.



Tikhonov Falls Ill


n MOSCOW (SPT) - Former Olympic biathlon champion Alexander Tikhonov, charged in an alleged plot to kill Kemerovo Gov. Aman Tuleyev, has been hospitalized with a concussion, Interfax said Friday.

Also Friday, a Novosibirsk court threw out an appeal by Tikhonov's lawyers to speed up an investigation into Tikhonov. The former athlete was arrested in Moscow on Aug. 8 and charged two days later.

Tikhonov, 53, fainted and hit his head Thursday at a detention center in Novosibirsk, Interfax said. He was later admitted to a prison hospital, where doctors said a blood disorder called thrombophlebitis had caused the former athlete to black out. Tikhonov's lawyers intend to ask the court to transfer their client to a specialized clinic for treatment, NTV reported.



Man Blows Himself Up


n MOSCOW (Reuters) - A man blew himself up with a homemade bomb Friday in a bungled attempt to kill his wife and her lover in the Far East city of Khabarovsk, Itar-Tass reported.

Itar-Tass quoted a police spokesman in the city as saying the bomb exploded when the man was trying to attach it to the door of the apartment where he believed the lovers were staying. 

The man visited the apartment's owner Thursday, looking for his wife. There, he threatened to "deal" with his wife and her friend, Itar-Tass said.



Business-Related Bomb


n MOSCOW (SPT) - Federal prosecutors said this week that the Aug. 8 Pushkin Square underpass explosion was most likely the settling of economic or personal scores. 

Nikolai Yakovlev, who supervises criminal investigations at the Prosecutor General's Office, announced Thursday that "these two versions present the optimal interest," news reports said. 

Two weeks ago, Vladimir Zin chen ko, deputy head of the Interior Ministry's department for economic crimes, told Izvestia the explosion was most likely related to "businessmen whose interests are tied to Pushkin Square."

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old woman who was severely burned in the bomb explosion died early Monday, bringing the death toll in the blast to 13, the Associated Press reported on Monday.



Reactor Shuts Down


n KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Operators at Ukraine's Zaporizhia atomic power plant shut down a nuclear reactor because of a defect in a control system, officials said Monday. No radiation leak was reported. 

The plant's reactor No. 6 was shut down Sunday night to repair a flaw in a reactor pipe, the state nuclear company Energoatom said. The repair work is expected to continue until Thursday. 

With six reactors, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is considered one of the largest in Europe. However, three of the reactors are undergoing repair.

TITLE: 3 Shot Dead in Suspected Gangland Slaying
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After a weekend of investigations, police have disclosed the names of the third of three victims of the assassination that took place in broad daylight on Friday in the center of St. Petersburg.


Killed along with Rostislav Anguladze and Gocha Tsagarenshvili was Anguladze's wife, Liana, whose identity was made known on Monday. The trio died when gunmen opened fire outside the entrance to the Borsalino restaurant in the Astoria Hotel at around 3:30 p.m. The murder took place in front of a small crowd of tourists, passersby and hotel staff.

Eyewitnesses said that the three pulled up to the restaurant in a Jeep Che ro kee, and that a beige Lada No. 6 model with tinted windows and a St. Petersburg license plate - which turned out to be false - gave way to the Jeep as it was parking. Firing a submachine gun, the two killers - whom witnesses described as of slight build, with one wearing a light-gray jacket - killed first Tsagarenshvili and Liana Anguladze as they were exiting the Jeep, planting at least two bullets in the head of each victim.

One of the killers then jumped out of the Lada and fired his pistol at Rostislav Anguladze, who had remained in the driver's seat. The assassins then fled, abandoning the car and the weapons 500 meters from the scene of the crime, and escaped in a Lada No. 9 model.

The two male victims were both Russian citizens with criminal histories, according to the City Prosecutor's Office press spokesman Gennady Ryabov. He said that this was the "main lead" for the police, and that the slaying was probably yet another criminal showdown.

Police found in Liana Anguladze's handbag a copy of a verdict issued by the court of the city's Kalininsky district in April this year. The court had given Tsagarenshvili an eight-year suspended sentence for extortion, robbery and kidnapping.

The Prosecutor's Office for that district had asked for the case to be reconsidered, saying that, in its opinion, the verdict was too lenient. A hearing was to be held on Sept. 5, but Tsagarenshvili failed to appear before the court.

Any affiliation with a particular criminal group operating in St. Petersburg has not yet been established, according to police.

Police also said the murder was unlikely to be connected to the conference on investment that was being held at the Astoria at the moment of the murder. The conference was headed by Andrei Illarionov, a top economics adviser to President Vladimir Putin, and Ruslan Linkov, leader of the Democratic Russia party's St. Petersburg branch.

Also at the conference were a number of well-known businessmen and politicians, including Mikhail Mirilashvili, head of the Jewish Congress and sponsor of the conference. However, the murder victims were not among the participants, Ryabov said.

"The [killers] must have just known where exactly to lie in wait for the victims. It could have happened at any other restaurant in the city," Ryabov said.

The type of weapon found in the killers' car was an Agram-2000 submachine gun - the same weapon used in the assassination of Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was killed at the entrance to her apartment building in November 1998.

The Agram-2000 is a weapon that was made in Croatia during the war with Serbia following Croatian independence in June 1991, said Terry Gander, editor of Jane's Infantry Weapons, on Monday.

Speaking by telephone, Gander said that the submachine gun was a product of one of "several backyard industries in Croatia."

Asked how such a weapon would end up in St. Petersburg, Gander said that the most likely reason was that a batch was left over "and flogged to whoever the highest bidder was." He added that such gun-running could have followed drug routes in Europe.

Ryabov did not attach any significance to the make of weapon, or in the fact that it was also used in the murder of Starovoitova.

"In showdowns like this, any kind of weapon - even rare foreign-made ones - can be used," he said.

TITLE: Electrical Glitch Shuts Off Reactors
AUTHOR: By Peter Graff
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A failure in its crumbling electric grid forced Russia to shut down several nuclear reactors over the weekend, including those at a gargantuan top-secret fuel-reprocessing plant, officials said on Monday.


Officials assured the public there was no danger, but the head of the huge, secret Mayak reprocessing plant, in the remote Ural mountains, said only his staff's "near-military" vigilance, had prevented "serious trouble."

The incident follows a catastrophic accident on a nuclear submarine last month that killed all 118 crew and a fire that gutted Moscow's television tower, and draws further attention to the dangerously decrepit state of Russian infrastructure.

"Everything is fine," an employee in the press office of the Atomic Energy Ministry said, adding that there was no danger.

Power plants at Mayak were shut down on Saturday after power was cut off for 45 minutes, the station's head, Vitaly Sadovnikov told Itar-Tass news agency. He said there had been no emissions of dangerous materials.

The Beloyarsk civilian nuclear power plant in nearby Sverdlovsk province was also shut down, provincial power company Sverdlovenergo said in a statement received by Reuters.

Sverdlovenergo said the power cuts were probably caused by a short circuit on a high-voltage line in its grid, but an investigation was underway.

The shutdowns, especially those at the Mayak plant, go to the heart of questions about nuclear safety in Russia.

Mayak - in Ozyorsk, a closed town of 86,000 surrounded by a double wire fence - is the biggest nuclear fuel-reprocessing plant in the world, handling radioactive material from all across Russia.

It was here that the plutonium for the first Soviet nuclear bomb was produced in 1949. The town's very existence was once a secret.

It is now also the site of a cavernous depot, being built with U.S. help, to keep 6,000 bombs' worth of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium from falling into the wrong hands.

"We were saved from major trouble by the near-military discipline which we still retain at the plant," Sadovnikov told Tass. "The staff responded well, demonstrating the knowledge of their equipment and not permitting any harmful emissions."

He said one of the plant's reactors was being restarted on Monday. It was not immediately clear how many reactors had been shut down at Mayak.

The U.S. Embassy said it could not immediately comment on whether American projects at Mayak were affected.

Sverdlovenergo was also working to restart its civilian reactor. Two non-nuclear power plants in the region were shut down as well, the company's statement said.

TITLE: Putin Makes Effort To Please at UN Millennium Summit
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS - Russian President Vladimir Putin turned the UN Millennium Summit into a marathon meet-and-greet, aiming to befriend as many world leaders as he could in just three days. He then capped his first visit to the United States with a television appearance on the Larry King Live Show, a must for any media-savvy leader. 


His goal: to restore the global clout that Russia has lost since the Soviet collapse. 

From his first appearance at the summit, when he got out of his limousine shirt-sleeved and hastily put on his formal jacket, Putin exuded briskness. He spent most of the summit's three days chatting with a long string of leaders, from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro.

But unlike Boris Yeltsin's Russia, which had a limited range of partners, Putin is seeking to expand their number by turning to leaders from different parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

Putin's wry humor and stealthy style contrasted sharply with Yeltsin's bear hugs and boisterous manner. Where Yeltsin relished attracting attention with controversial statements and antics, Putin prefers a subtle conversation. 

In his appearance on King's program, Putin displayed a rare agility in shooting down difficult questions ranging from the ongoing controversy with the United States on missile defenses to his own past as a KGB spy. His performance was even more surprising given the fact that he mostly faces friendly questions and speaks in carefully orchestrated television slots at home. 

Putin defended his handling of the Kursk submarine disaster, though he was quick to admit that he had made a public-relations mistake by failing to interrupt his vacation immediately after the disaster occurred. 

He dismissed the allegations that his government was suppressing media freedom, saying that the claim was being spread by media tycoons who want to cover up their own flaws. Putin also promised to look into the case of Edmund Pope, an American businessman arrested on espionage charges in April, after a court makes a verdict. 

Looking relaxed and speaking with ease, Putin offered an unorthodox look at the issue, saying that "intelligence can be that harmful" and then proudly spoke about his own KGB job, saying it was "interesting" and gave him "skills of dealing with people, with information." 

During the summit at the United Nations, he showed a talent for flattery, finding nice words for every leader he met. 

He hailed Cyprus President Glafcos Clerides as "one of the most experienced European leaders," extolled the flamboyant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as "one of the most dynamic leaders in Latin America" and praised Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for his courage in Mideast peace talks.

He also seemed eager to joke. "Congratulations on your wonderful speech," Putin told British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after both had spoken at the Security Council session Thursday. "It instantly woke me up." 

Putin's interlocutors were all eager to praise him. "I have a very good impression of him, he is a very professional politician," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said. 

Although Putin's visit was his first trip to the United States since his election in March, he took in only a few side events in New York. 

At one, he and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan went to the Solomon Guggenheim Museum on Thursday to take part in the opening of a Russian avant-garde exhibition. 

"It's the only kind of expansion by Russia which is possible in the United States - the cultural one," Putin said, winning loud applause. 

He also attended the signing ceremony Friday for U.S. Eximbank loan guarantees to Tyumen Oil Co., one of Russia's top four oil companies. 

The executives who gathered at the Russian UN mission for that ceremony had to wait for about half an hour for Putin to complete his talks with an exuberant Castro next door.

TITLE: American, Russian Unite for a Mammoth Space-Walk
AUTHOR: By Marcia Dunn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut floated out of space shuttle Atlantis early Monday and clambered up the towering international space station. 


Edward Lu and Yury Malenchenko made the grueling climb to lay cable and install a boom for a navigation unit on the exterior of the 45-meter station. They carried the bundled cables on their backs, along with the boom and all their tools. 

The spacewalkers ventured an astounding 30 meters from Atlantis' cargo bay, where the space station had been anchored for the past day. That's more than twice as far as the top of the Hubble Space Telescope, where other astronauts have worked. 

"Got a great view back at the nose of the shuttle," Lu called down. 

The space-walk official inside Mission Control, Mike Hess, said it was like working on the 11th story of a 13-story building. With one important exception - the blue Earth, with wispy clouds, was dazzling 400 kilometers below. 

Lu and Malenchenko were tethered to the structure as they worked, with mini jetpacks on their suits for added safety. 

Atlantis linked up with the station as the spacecraft soared above Kazakstan on Sunday, ending a two-day chase complicated slightly by a failed navigation device aboard the shuttle. 

"It was really great to see that the station has changed since the last time we were there [in May]," said flight director Mark Ferring. He was referring to the July arrival of the long-delayed Russian control module Zvezda. "The assembly is starting to pick up speed, and it's very exciting for us to see," he added. 

The crew was unable to get an air sample from the station because of bad equipment. But NASA said that would not prevent the seven astronauts and cosmonauts from entering the complex as planned Tuesday to deliver thousands of kilograms of supplies for the first residents, due in November. 

Another surprise was a jammed panel on one of Zvezda's solar wings. The panel did not unfold following launch of the module, and Mission Control had the astronauts survey it from inside with a camera. Spacewalkers may be asked to fix it on a future mission. 

For Monday morning's outing, Lu and Malenchenko got a lift some 12 meters up the space station, via the shuttle robot arm. Then they were on their own, ascending hand over hand like rock climbers. 

The hike up Mount Space Station was slow going and filled with obstacles: jutting antennas and docking targets. 

Astronaut Daniel Burbank, watching from inside the cockpit, guided Lu and Malenchenko up the stack. The spacewalkers had to go around, over and under the many protrusions. 

"Watch your head," Burbank ordered. "Don't move right. Bring your legs straight up ... Watch your right foot. Put your feet up." 

The two men needed to scale Zvezda in order to erect a two-meter boom for a compass. By measuring Earth's magnetic field, the compass, called a magnetometer, enables the space station to know which way it is pointed. 

Russia installed the magnetometer too close to Zvezda's metal hull, making its measurements are inaccurate. NASA had asked from the start that the magnetometer be equipped with a pop-out pole, but the Russian space program declined because of lack of funds, Hess said. 

The spacewalkers also had to string nine power, data and television cables between Zvezda and the Russian module Zarya. The cables, between five and eight meters long, were launched on reels. 

Malenchenko has performed spacewalks before, on Russia's Mir. Lu is a newcomer to spacewalking.



Links: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/index-m.html.

TITLE: Conciliatory Deputies Open Fall Session
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite a tumultuous August for Vladimir Putin, most of the Duma deputies back in parliament Friday for the start of the autumn session were not in the mood to challenge the president, postponing a discussion of the Kursk disaster and rejecting a bill that would have increased their own control over the president.


The most controversial item on the Duma's fall agenda is likely to be the 2001 budget, but, judging by the deputies' conciliatory mood, even that should not present too great a challenge for Kremlin lobbyists. It is also scheduled to discuss amendments launching a chapter of the Civil Code that would authorize the free sale and purchase of land, which if passed would be a significant boost to advocates of land reform.

The Duma proved itself to be Putin's faithful ally during the spring session, which it extended well into the planned summer break in order to push through his three bills aimed at asserting federal control over the regions.

In the month that the deputies have been away, Putin's reputation has suffered, thanks to his handling of the submarine tragedy. Still, it did not seem likely that the Duma would challenge him over the Kursk.

Lawmakers did observe a moment of silence for the 118 crew members who died on board last month.

On Sept. 15, deputy prime ministers Ilya Klebanov and Valentina Mat vi yen ko are due to appear before the Duma to provide answers for the disaster and the government's response. On the same day, the Duma will decide whether to launch their own investigation or simply to join the government commission.

Sergei Ivanenko, deputy head of the Yabloko faction, told journalists that Yabloko wanted to see an independent, parliamentary commission on the Kursk. At the same time, Ivanenko said, a constitutional amendment giving the Duma real investigative powers was also needed.

Such an amendment was passed by the previous Duma in the first reading, but it only barely received the necessary 300 votes. Ivanenko conceded it probably had even less of a chance in the current Duma.

"Now the pro-president, pro-government factions, who don't think this is very important, have much more weight in the Duma than they did before," he said.

A group of deputies also came to Putin's defense Friday, criticizing tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who announced this week he was giving his shares in ORT television to a group of journalists because of pressure from the government.

In an open letter to Berezovsky, Vyacheslav Volodin and Alexei Alexandrov, both of the Fatherland-All Russia faction, and Alexander Gurov of the pro-government Unity faction said the tycoon's letter was hypocritical.

The chamber overwhelmingly voted down 115 to 60 another challenge to Putin's authority - a bill proposed by the Union of Right Forces that would have required parliamentary approval for decisions to use the armed forces.

More substantial debate may be in store when the Duma considers the government's austere budget for 2001. The defense committee, for example, has already said it wants to raise defense spending from 206 billion rubles ($7.4 billion) to 271 billion rubles. The budget, which the government is striving to push through before the end of the year, is scheduled to be discussed Oct. 6, instead of the original Sept. 22 date.

TITLE: Experts Warn of Effects of Cuts to Military
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Defense Ministry on Friday confirmed reports that it would slash almost a third of its forces by 2003, but observers said the move could seriously undermine the country's ability to defend its extensive borders.


The military's might will be cut by 350,000 soldiers over the next three years, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said at a news conference in the town of Kubinka outside Moscow.

When all is said and done, the 1.2 million servicemen in the military will be pared down to 850,000, rather than the figure of 800,000 originally quoted by AVN military news agency on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly called for the military to be downsized to make it a leaner but better-financed and more efficient force. He recently cited the sinking of the Kursk submarine as an example of his country's inability to maintain an effective war machine at its present size.

"We must live by our means so that this [such an accident] won't happen," Putin told relatives of the lost Kursk crew last month. "We should have a smaller armed force that would be better equipped. ... Maybe we should not have 1.2 million [servicemen], but 1 million or 800,000."

Interfax cited "informed sources" Thursday as saying the proposals mentioned by Sergeyev provide for a reduction in the navy and air force of 50,000 and 40,000 servicemen, respectively. The army's personnel strength would be cut from the current level of about 400,000 to a mere 220,000.

The plan also stipulates that the Strategic Missile Forces, or RVSN, which remain the core of Russia's strategic nuclear triad, will have 10 of its intercontinental-ballistic-missile - or ICBM - divisions disbanded by 2006. The RVSN will also be required to transfer command of the military space troops to the General Staff.

Experts agreed Friday that the country's stalled war machine should be downsized before it can be reinvigorated.

However, it is not the Defense Ministry's ground troops that should bear the brunt of the pending cuts, said Alexander Pikayev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The troops of other federal agencies that have swelled out of proportion at the expense of the army would be better choices.

"Downsizing the army of such a land power as Russia is like having the United States disband its navy," Pi ka yev said.

He noted the army is already stretching itself to fight one conflict in Chechnya. Any further cuts would seriously undermine the army's already questionable ability to deter aggression from potential foes, most of whom threaten to strike across the country's 20,139 kilometers of borders, Pikayev said.

The expert added that Putin, who is commander-in-chief of the national armed forces, would be wiser to downsize the Interior Troops, or disband them altogether.

Pikayev also said that the planned elimination of entire RVSN divisions should be compensated by the procurement of at least 10 new Topol-M ICBMs to allow the Kremlin to hold onto the only bargaining chip it has managed to retain after the collapse of the Soviet superpower.

Both Pikayev and Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said the Defense Ministry should put whatever funds will be saved through the planned cuts toward financing the acquisition of new arms and combat training.

Pikayev said that only a civilian-led Defense Ministry will be able to fund the military's priorities evenly, since the "star-studded" heads of this agency have consistently tried to fund those branches of the armed forces from which they themselves emerged.

Both Pikayev and Pukhov expressed concern that such important steps as sweeping personnel cuts and downsizing of the strategic nuclear triad's most powerful element have been taken in part because of personal rivalries and could backfire.

TITLE: Wall Street Attains New Heights
AUTHOR: By Pierre Belec
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Missed out on August's sizzling rally in stocks? Get ready for what could be Wall Street's grand finale of 2000.


"The year-end rally probably began a month ago," says Peter Canelo, U.S. equity strategist for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

While people were watching sunsets and downing beers at the beach this summer, the New York Stock Exchange's composite index was quietly carving out new highs.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index, which is a broader reflection of the stock market, bumped up a week ago against its March 24 record close of 1,527.46 after gaining 6.5 percent in August. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 6.6 percent, making August its strongest month so far this year.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index was no slouch. It climbed into the plus column for the first time this year, jumping nearly 12 percent last month.

September has the reputation as the stock market's worst month. Among the things to watch are scary earnings pre-announcements before the start of the third -quarter reporting season.

In the months leading up to the November presidential election, the Street will weigh the candidates' odds of being elected and the impact that their economic visions for the future will have on the economy.

Historically, when interest rates are stable, stocks have gone up, so some investors are breaking out the champagne on signs the Federal Reserve may be through raising interest rates.

Some are looking to the next step, which would be for the inflation-fighting central bankers to start reducing the cost of borrowing money, perhaps next year.

Others have concluded there's less of a danger of inflation now that the economy is slowing after growing at such a fast pace it risked overheating.

The bullish camp is also applauding the great productivity story, which has bottled up inflation. The government this week revised upward its numbers, saying U.S. workers were more productive than previously thought in the second quarter of the year. This would suggest the productivity gains may continue to neutralize wage increases as far as the eye can see.

"With the Federal Reserve possibly out of the picture for the rest of the year, we think the way has been cleared for a continuation of the stock rally," Canelo said.

"By forgoing any change in interest rates [last month], the Federal Reserve signaled to the markets that it is satisfied that economic growth is slowing and inflation pressures may have peaked."

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a die-hard believer in the 'Old Economy,' is wondering how productivity can keep growing with the economy in a record 10th year of expansion.

Productivity shot up a stunning 5.7 percent between April and June while labor costs fell 0.4 percent from a year ago, allowing Corporate America to make more stuff without incurring higher labor costs.

What's happened is that the proliferation of computers and other cost-saving technologies has turned U.S. companies into the world's most efficient machines in history. Before tech ruled, such as in the '70s and '80s, productivity grew on average by a measly 1.5 percent annually.

"Never before in history has productivity surged so late in an economic cycle," says Sherry Cooper, global economic strategist for Harris Bank. "While some of the rise might be cyclical, the structural improvement is clearly sizable, thanks to the technology boom."

Investors are betting the economy has slowed enough to keep the inflation-chasing Greenspan from muddying the investment environment with more interest-rate increases. The Fed chief has raised rates six times since June 1999 to head off what he viewed as a serious threat of inflation.

TITLE: EU Trade Partners Find Weak Euro Concerning
AUTHOR: By Hans Greimel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FRANKFURT, Germany - The European Union's pride isn't the only thing smarting from the anemic performance of the euro, the common currency used by 11 EU nations.


Trade partners are becoming increasingly concerned because the euro's slide is making their goods less competitive in Germany, France, Spain and other euro nations, while it makes the euro zone's exports cheaper.

"If the current situation continues, it will end in a catastrophe for all of Poland's clothing sector," said Cezary Przybyslawski, head of a suit-making company that exports 80 percent of its product westward.

Poland is just one of several countries along the European Union's eastern border that rely heavily on trade with the EU. Przybyslawski said his company's revenues have slid 8 percent so far this year because of the euro's decline.

Przybyslawski's comments echoed the feeling among many eastern European exporters that the persistently weak euro is bad for business. Officials at Romania's exporters association say the euro's slide has cost exporters $100 million a month since the beginning of the year.

Such results are helping the euro zone build a trade surplus with non-euro-using neighbors.

In June, the first month after the euro slipped below 90 U.S. cents, the region's trade balance with the rest of the world jumped to a $1.32 billion surplus from a trade deficit the month before.

The picture is different, however, when the four EU countries not using the euro - Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Greece - are factored in. Because of their somewhat stronger currencies, the EU as a whole registered a $4.49 billion trade deficit in June.

The euro has since gone down even more, touching 86.37 cents last week.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroe der spurred the week's 4-cent slide when he said he wasn't worried about the weak euro because it made German exports cheaper overseas.

That may be fine for Germany, which has the EU's largest trade surplus, but for Britain, which has the bloc's biggest deficit, the weak euro is a threat.

German automaker BMW sold its Britain-based Rover passenger car division in May, in part because the strong British pound made Rover too expensive to operate. 

Schroeder's professed nonchalance about the euro's slump isn't shared by most western Europeans. 

Economists warn that the euro's weakness is fueling inflation, and most politicians in the euro zone take every opportunity to talk it up with rosy forecasts for Europe's recovering economy.

TITLE: Did Catastrophe Cause Dark Ages?
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Something catastrophic occurred on Earth 1,500 years ago that may have led to the Dark Ages and coincided with the end of the Roman Empire and the death of King Arthur, a Northern Ireland scientist said on Friday.


It could have been a bombardment of cometary debris or the eruption of a super volcano.

But whatever it was, it is clearly etched in the chronology of tree rings from around the world, according to Professor Mike Baillie, of Queen's University in Belfast.

The global environmental event that occurred around 540 AD is not recorded in any history books. But the tree-ring chronologies compiled from samples of trees, some preserved in bogs, which date back thousands of years, single out something that was quite extraordinary.

"It was a catastrophic environmental downturn that shows up in trees all over the world," Baillie told a news conference at the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference.

"This event is clear in the tree ring records."

The height of a tree is indicative of the quality of soil it is growing in but the rings hold clues about past climate conditions and have been used to date events in the past.

They correctly recorded the year without a summer in the North American region in 1816 and the eruption of various volcanoes around the world.

Baillie believes the slowdown of tree growth recorded in the rings around 540 AD was due to a bombardment of cometary debris which happened around the time of King Arthur's death, the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages.

Traditional myths recorded in 13th-century texts refer to a comet in Gaul around 540 AD when the sky seemed to be on fire, according to Baillie.

"These myths hint strongly at a bombardment vector for the environmental downturn but are almost universally dismissed as fiction or fantasy by academics," he said.

Baillie is appealing to historians to accept that something terrible happened around 540 AD and to find a record of it.

"I am calling for a debate by scientists and historians on how to approach the evidence for catastrophic events of this kind which were previously not known to have taken place," he added.

TITLE: Lake Data Gives Clues to Global Warming
AUTHOR: By Paul Recer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The Earth may have warmed by an average of more than 3 degrees over the past 150 years, according to an analysis of the freeze and thaw records for lakes and rivers in the Northern Hemisphere.


In a study that adds fresh support to the theory of global warming, researchers say that the annual freeze of 26 bodies of water in North America, Asia and Europe shifted later by about 8.7 days over the last century-and-a- half, while the spring ice breakup came an average of about 9.8 days earlier.

The study appeared Friday in the journal Science.

"The strength of this paper is the robust nature of direct human observations," said John J. Magnuson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and first author of the study. The results, he said, "are not calculations," which are subject to bias and instrument error, but "direct human observations of a 150-year trend of ice freeze and thaw" that are difficult to refute.

"It is clearly getting warmer in the Northern Hemisphere," he said. "This is very strong evidence of a general warming from 1845 to 1995 in areas where there is ice cover."

The change in the ice-on and ice-off days found in the study corresponds to an air temperature warming of about 1.8 degrees Celsius over the 150-year period, said Magnuson. An average temperature rise of just a quarter of a degree is enough to change the icing and de-icing dates by one day, the researchers said.

Other researchers said the ice findings are consistent with recent instrumented temperature readings and tend to support the idea that the Earth is getting warmer. Some scientists have said readings taken by temperature gauges and by satellites are subject to interpretation errors.

"This provides independent evidence that the warming we have seen over the 20th century is real," said David R. Easterling, chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, an archive center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Temperature trends are a part of the ongoing research to determine if the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, is causing global warming. The theory is that carbon dioxide and other gases added to the atmosphere by industry and transportation are trapping heat from the sun and causing the Earth to warm up.

Some scientists have contended the warming is not real or that it is part of a natural cycle unaffected by human actions.

Magnuson said his study does not address the cause of the warming trend, but clearly shows it is occurring.

Data for the ice study were compiled from records kept at lakes or rivers in Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Siberia, Japan and at 14 sites in five northern U.S. states.

Some of the records date back far longer than the 150 years studied.

The oldest records are those kept in two churches on the shore of Lake Constance on the Swiss-German border. Since about the 9th century, there has been a tradition of carrying a Madonna figure from one church to the other on the day that the lake froze enough to walk across. Following the freeze up a year later, the figure is returned to the alternate church.

In Japan, ice records have been kept since 1443 at a shrine on Lake Suwa. Shinto religious leaders believe male and female deities separated by the lake are united when it freezes over.

Lake and river ice records long have been important in Canada and the northern United States because the bodies of water often were used to transport people and commercial goods. The main U.S. lakes included in the study were Mendota, Monona and Geneva in Wisconsin; Detroit and Minnetonka in Minnesota; Oneida in New York, and Moosehead in Maine.

Scott Collins of the National Science Foundation, which funded the study, said it "is important because it humanizes impacts of global environmental change by using a simple measurement that is relevant and meaningful to the public."

TITLE: NASA Says Ozone Hole Larger Than Ever Before
AUTHOR: By Geir Moulson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA, Switzerland - The hole in the ozone layer is now three times larger than the United States - its biggest size ever, scientists at NASA said Friday. UN weather experts said the hole over the Antarctic is growing earlier in the year than usual.


Measurements of ozone depletion vary from year to year, making it difficult for scientists to determine the long-term environmental impact of changes in the ozone layer. Still, this year's hole - large and early - caught atmospheric experts off guard.

"The fact that it's real big right now is kind of a surprise," said Dr. Paul A. Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The center detected an ozone hole of about 29 million square kilometers on Sept. 3. That was the biggest ever, beating the previous record of 27 million square kilometers on Sept. 19, 1998, it said.

In Geneva, the UN World Meteorological Observation said stations in the Antarctic reported decreases in ozone of between 10 percent and 50 percent compared with the period between 1964 and 1976, before the ozone hole was observed. Though ozone levels decrease each year starting in July, such a large drop was "unprecedented" this early in the season, the WMO said Friday.

"It is remarkable to find these low values so early in September, perhaps one or two weeks earlier than in any previous year," the agency said.

Experts stressed that atmospheric variations from year to year combine with man-made gases to determine the hole's size. They said they can't be certain what the measurements mean for the rest of this year and beyond.

Depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica and the Arctic is being monitored because ozone protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Too much UV radiation can cause skin cancer and destroy tiny plants at the beginning of the food chain.

Antarctic ozone depletion starts in July, when sunlight triggers chemical reactions in cold air trapped over the South Pole during the Antarctic winter. It intensifies during August and September before tailing off in October as temperatures rise.

Circular winds, known as a vortex, trap air, giving chemicals the chance to react with the ozone.

"The polar vortex is bigger this year-bigger than 1998," Newman said. "The containment vessel is larger and so the size is larger."

Its size raises concerns that "we're perhaps beginning to see some evidence of climate change in the stratosphere," although no firm evidence is available, he said.

"Maybe we have to be a little more serious about looking at this problem of the interaction of global warming and stratosphere cooling and ozone loss," he added.

The strength of the vortex means the ozone hole may persist a few days longer than usual, breaking up in December, Newman said.

Human-made chlorine compounds used in refrigerants, aerosol sprays, solvents, foam-blowing agents and bromine compounds used in firefighting halogens cause most ozone depletion.

TITLE: Scientists Oppose Restrictions on Private Stem-Cell Research
AUTHOR: By Maggie Fox
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - New National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines on using cells from discarded human embryos will help prevent private researchers from going too far and make benefits from the research available to many more Americans, top scientists said on Thursday.


They urged Congress to keep the research legal and stressed that all lines of scientific research using stem cells - the body's master cells - need to be kept open.

Experts think research using stem cells has the potential to transform medicine, offering treatments and even cures for diseases such as juvenile diabetes, in which the pancreas is damaged, heart disease and spinal cord injuries.

The cells seem so powerful because, when taken from very early embryos, they still can become any kind of cell in the body. The hope is to direct this development so they can be used for tissue and even organ transplants.

Opponents say taking the cells involves destroying a human life - even though the embryos used are left over from "test-tube" fertility treatments and would be discarded anyway.

Current law forbids the use of federal funds to actively derive these cells from embryos. But the NIH released guidelines last month that would allow federally funded scientists to use the cells if provided by private researchers.

The guidelines are strict - the cells can only be taken from embryos that were frozen and they may not be taken from any embryo created for any use other than fertility treatment.

"These guidelines will encourage openness ... and help assure public access to the practical, medical benefits of this research," Dr. Allen Spiegel, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), told Thursday's hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services.

"I think we need to harness the enormous brainpower that the NIH is capable of," Spiegel added.

"I think the NIH sets the standard for the world and for the field," said Dr. Gerald Fischbach, director of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), another one of the institutes that make up the NIH.

"I think the guidelines will influence industry."

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, ranking member of the subcommittee, agreed. "The NIH guidelines for stem cell research will give scientists a procedural and ethical framework to pursue this research in an ethical, sound manner," said Harkin, a Democrat.

"I think it is important to note that stem cell research in the private sector has been going on for years without any federal monitoring or ethical requirements."

Opponents of the use of embryonic stem cells argue that there is another source of stem cells - adult stem cells. These cells were discovered in bone marrow but they have since been found throughout the body.

Some research suggests that these cells can sometimes be coaxed into differentiating into various cells.

But Fischbach said it is not yet clear whether adult stem cells are anywhere near as powerful as embryonic stem cells.

"I believe that stem cells have been discovered in adult tissues - quite surprisingly in the brain - and do have the capability to proliferate and differentiate," Fischbach said.

"But I think these are early reports," he added. It was not clear if these cells had completely converted into neurons. It was also not clear just how many of them could be grown.

"It would not be responsible of us to use these in place of embryonic stem cells," he said.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who chairs the subcommittee and who has called the ongoing series of hearings on stem cells, said the Senate would debate his proposed bill, The Stem Cell Research Act of 2000, later this year.

It proposes allowing government-funded researchers to derive their own stem cells.

"I think the Senate vote is going to be very, very important not only on this issue but on the ... future of medical research," Specter said, calling stem cell technology a "veritable fountain of youth."

TITLE: Court Rules Law Does Not Protect Napster Site
AUTHOR: By David Kravets
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO - The federal government weighed in on the closely watched case against Napster Inc. for the first time Friday, saying the music-sharing service is not protected under a key copyright law, as the company claims.


In briefs to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for the U.S. Copyright Office said Napster has "no possible defense" against one of the major arguments by the recording industry that it facilitates widespread copyright infringement.

The agency, whose position is not binding, sided with U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who in July ruled for the industry, finding that Napster is contributing to widespread copyright infringement in violation of the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act.

Napster cites the same law, which allows copying of music for personal use, in arguing that it is immune.

"Napster asserts ... the Audio Home Recording Act provides its users with immunity from liability for copyright infringement and, in so doing, relieves Napster itself from any derivative liability for contributory or vicarious infringement," government lawyers wrote. "The District Court was correct to reject that defense."

An attorney for Napster said that the company still had other legal defenses besides the Audio Home Recording Act.

"The most that this is saying is that this one particular defense is not available to us," said attorney Robert Silver. The government "doesn't take issue with any of our other defenses, even though they could have," he said.

The government's briefs came four weeks before a three-judge panel of the circuit court hears the case in San Francisco. The same court spared Napster from an order by Patel that would have shut down the site pending the outcome of the trial. In issuing the stay, the panel said "substantial questions" had been raised about the merits and form of the injunction.

Patel granted the injunction at the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Napster in December for copyright infringement. The RIAA was expected to file court briefs backing the government's position.

Cary Sherman, RIAA general counsel, said the government's brief shows how "twisted" Napster's argument is.

"Napster is basically arguing that the Audio Home Recording Act gives them immunity. The government is saying that that is simply not true," Sherman said.

In its filing Friday, the government wrote that the Audio Home Recording Act protects consumers who copy protected works for personal consumption, not public or commercial distribution. Napster allows users to share music with millions of others, the government wrote.

The act "makes no reference, and provides no possible defense, to infringement claims based on the public distribution of copied works," the government wrote.

Napster has said in court briefs that neither its users - who trade music for free - nor the company that helps them do so are in violation of copyright law and are protected by the act in question. Napster asked the court to reverse and vacate the injunction.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: GM Issues Recall


DETROIT, Michigan (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. is recalling almost 270,000 Buick and Oldsmobile cars because they have driver air bags that may fire unexpectedly, but the world's largest automaker does not yet have the parts needed to fix the problem, a trade publication said Monday.

GM told Automotive News that time was needed to start production of replacement igniters for the air bags and that repairs should begin by the end of the year. The igniter is a key part of an air bag module.



Western Union Hacked


DENVER, Colorado (AP) - Hackers stole credit and debit card information from 15,700 online customers of Western Union, whose Web site was unprotected while undergoing maintenance.

By Sunday evening, no cases of credit card fraud had been reported to the Englewood, Colorado-based company, and only customers who used the Web site to transfer money remain at risk, said Peter Ziverts, a Western Union spokesman.

The company began notifying customers of the problem on Friday, when the computer attack was first detected. By late Sunday, Visa International and MasterCard International Inc. had been contacted so that cardholders' accounts could be monitored for possible fraud.



Albania Joins WTO


GENEVA (Reuters) - Albania on Monday became the 138th member of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), in a move the body's chief said could help foster greater stability in the Balkan region.

Albanian government officials have said membership will also help the country overcome its acute economic and social problems.

The Balkan state's entry was automatic as it completed negotiations on admission terms earlier this year and presented its formal notification that the entry accord had been ratified by its parliament a month ago.



iX on Hold


BERLIN (AP) - Germany's Deutsche Boerse on Monday delayed a vote on its troubled plan to combine with the London Stock Exchange, as a rival bid for the British exchange threatened to derail the creation of Europe's first powerful counterweight to Wall Street.

"A new date has not been fixed yet," Deutsche Boerse said in a statement. "With the postponement, Deutsche Boerse is keeping all its options open."

Shareholders in Deutsche Boerse, which has suggested it may make a sweetened offer, were to vote on the planned merger - to be dubbed the iX - Thursday.

OM Gruppen formally presented its bid Monday. 



U.S. Wants More Time


GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States on Monday asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to give it 15 months to change its laws on music copyright to come into line with a recent ruling by a panel of the trade body.

But the European Union, which brought the case against the United States, said it wanted implementation of the ruling in a much shorter timeframe.

The case, sparked by protests to the European Commission from the Irish Music Rights Organization (IMRO), centered on current U.S. legislation which allows most bars, restaurants and shops to play music without paying royalties to performers.

TITLE: U.S. Federal Bank Says Oil Prices at Their Peak
AUTHOR: By Marjorie Olster
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHICAGO - The surge in oil prices may be near its peak, and U.S. inflationary pressures are set to ease in the months ahead, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert McTeer said on Monday.


"I think inflation will come down," McTeer said, answering a question after addressing a business economists' conference.

Most of the recent inflation run-up is energy related, and that probably will cause one or two more months of bad inflation data, McTeer said. But he added: "It is possible oil prices are at their peak."

McTeer told a conference of the National Association for Business Economics in Chicago that the U.S. economy's pace of expansion was likely to slow further.

The change in composition in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between the first and second quarters "suggests some further slowing is likely," he said, pointing to recent data on business investment and inventories as signals of further slowing. He also noted a slowdown in interest-rate-sensitive sectors such as housing and possibly car sales, but said the expected pause in GDP growth may be temporary.

"It will probably come down a bit more before we come back up," he said.

He said the Fed, which has hiked interest rates by 1.75 percentage points to 6.50 percent since June 1999, should base its policy on controlling inflation rather than on regulating economic growth, because productivity growth limits were uncertain.

McTeer, the Fed's most outspoken proponent of the so-called New Economy, has said the economy can probably grow at about a 4.0-percent annual pace with little inflation. He dissented twice last year against rate hikes when he was a voting member of the Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), but he does not vote on the panel this year.

Oil-producing nations this weekend agreed to increase output, in a move that analysts say eventually will relieve pressure on crude oil prices, which have surged to 10-year highs above $35 a barrel. This run-up in energy costs has put upward pressure on U.S. inflation. The Consumer Price Index has risen by a 4.0-percent annual rate in the first seven months of this year, up from 2.7 percent all of last year.

U.S. crude spiked through $35 a barrel on Monday morning as traders bet that OPEC's 800,000-barrels-per-day production hike would not be enough to stem rising prices.

Although it was difficult to judge the speed limits for economic growth, McTeer said he believed gains in productivity would keep inflationary pressures in check.

"I am confident that productivity growth will remain high" especially if job growth remains tight, he said.

Financial markets kept a wary eye on McTeer's comments but his remarks had little effect on prices, traders said. U.S. Treasuries stayed in negative territory as crude oil prices rose despite the oil-producer agreement to hike production. Stock prices were slightly higher, with the Dow Jones industrial average and Nasdaq composite up less than half a percent.

TITLE: Lenenergo Cuts Just Part of Bigger Picture
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The summer of 2000 may turn out to be remembered as the time when Russia's energy industry finally began to try to get under control the web of spiraling debts that had for so long characterized the relations between its various players. As a result of a requirement from the federal government that Unified Energy Systems (UES), the national power monopoly, pay its tax debt to the federal budget in full, and a similar call from Russian gas giant Gazprom for UES to pay up, UES and its subsidiaries have embarked upon a campaign of cutting off power to their debtors. But the roots of the cutoff policy go further back than this summer. By the same token, the situation of indebtedness, and the causes that underlie it, are not so simple. A little over a year ago, on Sept. 1 1999, Gazprom moved to force its clients in St. Petersburg to pay their debts by threatening to reduce the gas supply to the city. Included among the debtors was energy utility Lenenergo, which provides electric power to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Lenenergo's debts totalled 2.1 billion rubles (about $75 million) - approximately half of the money owed to Gazprom by enterprises in the city at the time. According to Lenenergo's statistics, the company managed to pay Gazprom for 50 percent of the gas it received in 1999 while, in 1998, Gazprom received payment for only 30 percent of the gas supplied and in 1997 that figure was a mere 10 percent. And, while Gazprom is Lenenergo's biggest creditor, it is by no means alone. Lenenergo also owes 500 million rubles ($18 million) to its parent company, UES, and 624 million rubles ($22.5 million) to the Leningrad Atomic Power Station (LAES), according to LAES general director Andrei Likhachyov. The situation with regard to LAES has deteriorated to the point that the station filed a suit against Lenenergo, demanding the payment of 800 million rubles ($ 28.9 million) to cover Lenenergo's debts for power supplied - a figure even higher than that given by the utility's general director. The hearing of the case in the Leningrad Oblast Arbitration Court is scheduled for Sept. 22. But, while Lenenergo officials admit that they have piled up significant debts to their suppliers, they say that the fact that they have been unable to pay their creditors is due to circumstances beyond their control. In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times a year ago, Arkady Trachuk, deputy chairman of Lenenergo, blamed the St. Petersburg city administration for much of his company's woes, saying that the city was only paying a third of what it owed to Lenenergo for public-sector power use. Throughout the summer, the management at Lenenergo steadfastly maintained that it would be able to pay off all of its debts to Gazprom, UES and LAES on one condition - if it was able to collect all of the money it is owed by its own creditors. Our tariffs are set at a level considered to be adequate to cover the costs of repairs, paying for our gas supply, preparing or the winter season, and paying for whatever energy we receive from sources in the region," Likha chyov said. "But that is assuming that all of the subscribers pay." According to Hartmut Jacob, utilities analyst at Renaissance Capital, public and private-sector debtors in the city owe Lenenergo a figure around 2 billion rubles (about $72.2 million).
A significant amount of attention has been paid to the role of UES in instigating the get-tough policies of Lenenergo and other regional power providers toward its debtors. UES itself owes 36 billion rubles (about $ 1.3 billion) to the state budget, and twice that amount - 72 billion rubles (about $2.6 billion) - to Gazprom. Both creditors have put increased pressure on UES to pay up.
A general stiffening of the policy of Russian power companies toward their debtors was initiated as a result of a June order from UES, demanding that the 240 billion rubles (about $ 8.6 billion) owed to the parent firm be paid by its subsidiaries, according to UES chief Anatoly Chubais. But, while the approximately 80 UES daughter energy companies all over Russia started cutting off their debtors as a result of the order, Likha chyov says that Lenenergo initiated the process of their own accord. "UES order no. 358, where Chubais called for a stiffer policy toward debtors and for the energy companies to refuse barter payments is popularly known as the starting point," Likhachyov said. "But we've been working according to the character of that order - demanding all payments in cash - from the beginning of the year. The order from UES just made us more secure that we had made the right decision and were moving in the right direction." Lenenergo started to cut power to its debtors in March of this year, after many of the firms who had earlier made partial payments, or who had been paying by barter, refused to up their cash payments to the utility. "A lot of people were eager to see what the results of the cutoffs would be," Likhachyov said. "Well, each month since Lenenergo began shutting the energy off, the company has been receiving payments more than the billing charges for that month." "In July, Lenenergo received 142 percent of the total it billed its clients - 119 percent paid in cash. In August we harvested 126 percent - 97 in cash. This means that we are not only being paid for energy provided in the present, but are receiving part of the debts accrued in the past," Likhachyov said. In total, over the last month we took in about 500 million rubles ($18 million)." But, while many industry insiders, including Chubais, say that only rate hikes will allow the companies to receive the proper revenue from the energy they produce, Likhachyov skirts the issue. "Does the payment of their debts by some Lenenergo clients mean that, after a few months, we should ask for a raise in tariffs?" Likhachyov asked. "Well, in that case, all of those who already pay would just end up paying more while, for those who don't, there would be no difference. That's just absurd." But, Likhachyov's words aside, UES and the regional power providers - including Lenenergo - have been pushing for just such rate increases. At the end of August, UES appealed to the Federal Energy Commission for a hike of 300 percent in the rates - from 3.5 kopeks to 11.5 kopeks per megawatt-hour - charged by its daughter companies, including Lenenergo. For its part, on Aug. 21 Lenenergo filed its own request with the Federal Energy Commission to raise its tariffs. According to Likhachyov, the real price of producing electricity for Lenenergo at present is 53 kopeks per megawatt-hour, far above the 37 kopeks the company is allowed to charge. A decision from the commission on the request is expected later this month. Likhachyov says that the hikes are long overdue. He says that Lenenergo at present cannot turn a profit, and that its losses in the first half of 2000 totaled 60 million rubles ($ 2.1 million). "Our losses were caused by unrealistic tariffs on energy," Likhachyov said in comments reported by Interfax. "However, our goal is to finish the year without losses, which is impossible to do without an increase in tariffs." Not everyone is so willing to go along with Likhachyov on this point. The city government opposes the tariff hike, arguing that Lenenergo was already granted a 40-percent raise in tariffs by the regional energy commission on June 1. Lenenergo had asked for an 80-percent increase. "We will suggest to the energy commission that the 40-percent increase is sufficient to allow Lenenergo to be profitable as long as it properly manages its finances," Alexander Smirnov, the vice governor of St. Petersburg said last Tuesday. "Of course the administration doesn't want to pass such unpopular measures," Likhachyov answered. "But what a wonderful situation - it's simply absurd. Everyone agrees that the monopolist shouldn't be able to set his own price, as he would unfairly inflate it." "But the regional energy commission is a representative of the administration and of the city - the main recipient of the energy," Likhachyov added. "So here, it's a case of the consumer setting his own price." Likhachyov said that the problem will ultimately only be solved through a restructuring of the energy sector in Russia, a project which Anatoly Chubais has been trying to bring about at UES, although resistance has been strong. "The point in the restructuring is to create a real market situation in the energy sector, including with regard to pricing," Likhachyov said. "Then competition can ensure that the most efficient units will be able to supply energy at the proper cost."

TITLE: OPEC Hike 'No Threat' To Russia's Oil Windfall
AUTHOR: By Aleksandras Budrys
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - OPEC's decision over the weekend to raise crude oil output will not affect volumes of crude exports by Russian oil companies, nor will it have a strong impact on Russia's economy, analysts said Monday.


Ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed Sunday to lift output by 800,000 barrels per day from October in an attempt to beat down prices, which hit a 10-year record of over $35 a barrel Thursday.

"At $25, we reckon, the [Russian] companies will still be making eight or so dollars a barrel net profit, while at $35 they are making almost $15 net profit," said James Henderson of Renaissance Capital, a Moscow-based brokerage.

"The margins are still very large even at lower oil prices and I don't think we are going to see export volumes decline," he said, adding that Russia's export volumes have been at 2.2 million to 2.3 million barrels per day in the past six to 12 months.

"A fall in the oil prices from $35 to $25 and even to $20 is not a disaster for oil companies."

Analysts say Russian companies will use every possible avenue to increase their exports and cash in on high prices.

"The prices abroad will still be higher than on the domestic market and therefore exports will grow," said Ivan Mazalov, oil analyst at Moscow investment bank Troika Dialog.

He said Russia could still raise crude oil export capacity.

"It is generally believed that [pipeline monopoly] Transneft is working at the limit of its capacities, but they kept saying that in previous years, when exports were lower," he said.

Analysts said that the OPEC agreement was unlikely to make oil prices plunge in the near future, but they said a more significant decline could be expected later, although not to the levels of two years ago when they were at $9 per barrel.

"By the start of next year the price will fall to some $25 per barrel, but by the end of the year it will be at around $18 to $20," said Vladimir Nosov of Flemings UCB.

"When the price of oil is high, more expensive projects come on stream and not necessarily in the OPEC countries. Supply volume increases and the price goes down, then expensive projects are conserved and the price is fixed at a lower level."

But Troika's Mazalov said crude price may reach the level of $18 per barrel as early as the beginning of 2001.

"OPEC is unable to set an exact oil price, but only the direction of its movement. When the price was $9 they wanted an increase to $18, but what they got was $33," he said.

Analysts noted a fall in oil prices had been widely expected in Russia, and the government had drafted the 2001 state budget on the basis of crude prices of $18 to $19 per barrel.

"They have evidently been prepared for such a development," Fleming's Nosov said.

Russian news agencies quoted Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying any fall in world oil prices resulting from OPEC's decision would not hurt spending. "We are ready for any change in the market this year," Interfax quoted Kudrin as saying.

TITLE: Transneft Meets Oil Majors To Discuss Raise in Charges
AUTHOR: By Yelizaveta Osetinskaya
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - State pipeline monopoly Transneft chief Sergei Vainshtok met secretly on Thursday with the bosses of every major oil company in the country except Sibneft and Surgutneftegaz to announce an increase in transport tariffs.


Vainshtok said the reason for the increase was that Transneft needed more funds for its construction projects.

Sources said specific projects, such as the Baltic Pipeline System or a pipeline to run parallel to the Uk rainian border between the Sukhodolnaya and Rodionovka compressor stations in western Russia, were not discussed and the conversation dealt with developing the transport infrastructure in general.

Vainshtok asked the oil bosses to make their own proposals to the Federal Energy Commission, which regulates Transneft's fees, on what the tariff on transporting oil for export should be.

It was unclear whether a one-off price increase was discussed or whether Transneft wanted to change its entire methodology for calculating prices by establishing a special investment fee for moving oil.

The exact amount that Transneft requires was not divulged. In August the monopoly made an application to the Federal Energy Commission proposing tariff increases of 25 percent, which Transneft subsequently withdrew.

At the meeting, oil heads suggested that Transneft could make more effective use of the funds it already has.

Over the past year transportation costs for the oil majors have increased significantly. A government source said that the rises have brought Transneft $400 million more this year than in 1999.

The head of one oil company said the critical reaction to Transneft's presentation of its plight was such that "by the end of the meeting the Transneft president looked rather embarrassed."

Several other thorny issues were discussed, including the difference between actual losses from pipelines and the estimates used by Transneft.

Transneft did not comment on the meeting, but vice president Sergei Gri goryev said earlier that while Trans neft's figures looked daunting this was nothing to the oil majors. In his words, the oil companies spend a mere 3 percent of their income on transportation.

TITLE: Raised Oil Output Faces Skeptics
AUTHOR: By Bruce Stanley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - OPEC's official agreement to boost oil production by 3 percent may not add enough new crude to world markets to roll fuel prices back decisively from 10-year highs, analysts say.


Fuel prices dipped at first but then shot higher on commodity markets Monday amid skeptical reactions to OPEC's decision to add 800,000 barrels on top of its daily production target of 25.4 million barrels.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Robert Priddle, warned that OPEC's planned increase is unlikely to stabilize oil markets, and even OPEC president Ali Rodriguez expressed doubt that the cartel's decision would significantly dampen prices.

October contracts of North Sea Brent crude climbed 77 cents higher at $33.55 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange in London, after slipping as much as 93 cents earlier in the day. Contracts of light, sweet crude surged $1.57 to $35.20 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries formally announced the increase Monday, in the face of mounting international pressure to pump more crude, and cool sizzling prices.

Their new daily quota of 26.2 million barrels will take effect Oct. 1, and OPEC members agreed to meet again Nov. 12 to reassess market conditions.

OPEC secretary General Rilwanu Lukman acknowledged that oil prices were high, but he told a news conference that they don't threaten global economic growth.

"There is no shortage," he added. "Some people are having to give hefty discounts in order to get rid of their current production."

Analysts warned that the bulk of OPEC's planned increase, which was roughly in line with what many had predicted, will serve only to legitimize the 700,000 barrels that OPEC members are already estimated to be producing each day above their current quotas. As a result, analysts expect the impact on prices will be meager - particularly for Americans who depend on heating oil to warm their homes.

Jareer Elass, a Washington-based energy consultant, said the increase would do little more than "cap" prices at around current levels.

Priddle of the IEA said the output decision was unlikely to stabilize volatile markets, due partly to questions about the actual number of fresh barrels to be pumped and the outcome of OPEC's November price review.

"The producers say they have set themselves the objective of achieving stability through unilateral market management. So far they have achieved just the reverse," he said in a statement.

The Paris-based IEA is part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world's wealthiest countries.

Governments and consumers in many oil-importing nations have reacted with concern and anger as fuel prices have tripled in less than two years. In France, taxi drivers and truckers blocked roads last week to protest gasoline prices, while motorists in Belgium and Germany and farmers in Britain mounted similar, if smaller, efforts to disrupt traffic. Many Americans worry that low inventories will cause a spike in heating oil prices this winter.

"The reason for the recent rise in fuel prices is to do with the rise in world oil prices. The sensible way, the only right way to deal with this problem, is to put pressure on OPEC," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

For its part, OPEC blamed speculation and high fuel taxes in Europe for much of the firmness in prices.

In an official statement, OPEC expressed its "dismay" that European governments seemed unwilling to reduce their fuel taxes to help ease the problem. Lukman said he had met earlier Monday with three representatives from the European Union to discuss the issue.

Leo Drollas of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London said the increase was the minimum necessary to replenish U.S. inventories of crude gradually. But while prices for crude may start to stabilize and even fall, heating oil prices are likely to stay high, he said.

TITLE: Forum To Boost Film Industry
AUTHOR: By Kirill Galetski
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia's film industry seems to be coming out of its crisis-induced slump. And, with more films being produced domestically and over 90 theaters nationwide now equipped with contemporary systems, the industry sorely needs a support and maintenance network, grounded in a fairly stable and growing film-exhibition business.


Aimed at serving as a focal point for the Russian film business, the Cinema In Russia International Forum, which runs through Saturday, June 16 at the newly renovated Leningrad Cinema Center, boasts everything to do with distributing and exhibiting films under one roof - a first in Russia. Last year, the annual Cinema Theater of the 21st Century exhibit and the Interstate Cinema, Television and Video Market occurred separately, in different cities. The forum's director, Adrian Gurvich had the idea to consolidate everything after attending film business expos in the West.

"This expo is unique, as it will bring buyers and sellers together," declared forum president Mikhail Yamshikov at a press conference. "I hope that this step in our development will revitalize the flow of [films through] the sequence of filmmaker, distributor, exhibitor and audience that has been impeded by tough economic conditions."

On the cultural side of things, the forum will premiere 28 films, both foreign and domestic, among them the American blockbuster "X-Men," Russian director Pavel Lungin's "The Marriage," with Lungin and crew in attendance, and the most expensive French film ever, "Asterix and Obelix Take On Caesar."

Through these showings, the Lenin grad will show off its new facilities, the result of a 6-million-ruble, state-funded renovation completed by Soyuzstroy. The renovation of the theater has run behind schedule and over-budget, with workers racing to complete construction before the start of the forum, and the theater likely to be left owing Soyuzstroy twice the originally budgeted amount. The theater will likely ask the government to pick up the extra cost.

The main hall of the theater now features fewer seats, but much more leg room, as well as Dolby Digital Sound, produced by a combination of foreign and domestic equipment. 

"What is a movie theater?" asks Oleg Moiseyev, the general manager of the Leningrad cinema. "It's the film and comfort. The new seating is entirely Russian made. I considered buying foreign-made seating when I was at a trade show in Hong Kong, and almost finalized a deal, but with Russia's draconian customs duties, the cost proved to be prohibitive - $200 a seat, plus a 40% customs duty plus VAT!" 

By comparison, Russian-made chairs cost around $75 each. The distance between rows has also been increased to an international-standard 110 cm, up from the Soviet-era 75 cm, permitting much easier navigation for viewers. 

The sound system is an odd mix of equipment. While the speakers are a mix of Russian and foreign-made, the licensed copy of the Dolby processor and the acoustic masking were made in Russia by the Science Research Cinema and Photography Institute (NIKFI). 

The American firm Barco will demonstrate new digital film-projection technology for the first time in Russia, using commercials and short films specially made to showcase the possibilities of the equipment. Despite Moiseyev's penchant for domestic seating, the Italian concern Centromobile will showcase its latest designs in theater seating. A host of other firms will also demonstrate their wares.

In attendance at the forum will be a who's who of the international cinema industry, with over 300 accredited guests from several countries and all 70 regions of Russia. Among the guests there will be Alexander Golutva, former CEO of Lenfilm and now the Deputy Minister of Culture. Visiting executives include Barry Jones from Coca-Cola and Dennis Kelly from Eastman Kodak. St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Yakovlev is expected to be on hand to open the event.

Coca-Cola, one of the forum's main sponsors, will be conducting a seminar on maximizing movie theaters' profits through peripheral sales - meaning concessions, souvenirs, etc. The German firm Kinoton will provide instruction in the economics of film-theater management, and will demonstrate a new electronic ticketing system which will replace the antiquated and error-prone paper system, and may eventually become the norm in regular theater and concert ticket outlets. Kinoton will then donate the system to the Leningrad cinema.


The Cinema In Russia International Forum, held at the Leningrad Cinema, 4 Potyomkinskaya Ul., Tel.: 272-6213. M: Chernyshevskaya. For more information, visit the forum's Web site at "www.cinemarussia.ru"

TITLE: Protestors Disrupt Australian WEF Summit
AUTHOR: By Mike Corder
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Screaming protesters clashed with police Monday and vandalized the cars of delegates trying to enter an international economic forum - the latest target of an anti-globalization movement.


Thousands of demonstrators surrounding the hotel and casino complex where the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Summit is being held. They delayed the start of the event organized by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum.

One delegate, Western Australia state Premier Richard Court, was trapped in his car for about 20 minutes as a crowd of protesters jumped on it and slashed its tires. Angry clashes broke out as police, some on horseback, broke through the crowd to allow Court's car to pass.

Court condemned the protesters as a "mob."

"They basically slashed the tires, painted the car, jumped up and down on the roof, the boot," he said. "It was un-Australian and marked a sad day for the nation's history."

Another state politician's car was sprayed with the slogan "WEF kills." Buses carrying dozens of delegates were unable to pass through the crowd.

A police spokesman speaking on condition of anonymity said two officers were hospitalized for injuries sustained in the crush. Two protesters were arrested "on suspicion of assaulting police." They were released but would be charged later, the spokesman said.

The violence quieted quickly, although tense standoffs between police and protesters continued at several entrances to the complex. Most of the 800 registered delegates were able to enter the complex, conference organizers said. The start was delayed by less than an hour.

The forum brings together business and government officials to discuss the global economy. Government leaders and business executives, including Microsoft's Bill Gates, were to discuss future economic development in Asia.

Protest organizer David Glanz said he considered the demonstration a success despite the violence, which he said was limited to the "fringe."

"I think the people who have felt some of that anger [from protesters] have to realize that if they continue pushing through privatization and cutbacks, then they must expect to meet the anger of the people," Glanz said.

Conference spokesman Claude Smadja slammed the protest, saying the WEF was the wrong target for opponents of globalization.

"It is done out of sheer ignorance of what the forum is and what it stands for," Smadja said. "The aim is not to promote globalization. The aim is to discuss the issues raised by globalization."

About two hours before the summit was to begin, thousands of protesters gathered as police boats patrolled the nearby Yarra River and a helicopter buzzed overhead. Dozens of groups, from pupils at an exclusive girls' college to gays claiming they are exploited by corporate greed to Green lawmakers, said they would march Monday.

Fearing violent protests like those in Seattle at last year's World Trade Organization talks, Nike closed its flagship Melbourne store on Sunday and boarded up the windows. Other stores also closed for the day and police patrolled hotels used by summit delegates.

TITLE: Hewlett-Packard Plans Buy Of PricewaterhouseCoopers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. said Monday it is in talks to buy the consulting arm of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers for about $18 billion in cash and stock.


Hewlett-Packard said terms of the deal have not been agreed upon and "significant issues remain to be resolved." The purchase would boost Hewlett-Packard's booming technology consulting services.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the No. 1 accounting firm, was expected to sell or spin off its consulting business since accounting firms are under pressure from federal regulators about potential conflicts when an auditing firm also serves as consultant to clients.

Technology companies have been eager to take advantage of the restructuring of accounting and consulting businesses. Data networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. last year bought a 19.9-percent stake in KPMG's consulting business, which plans an initial public offering. Ernst & Young is selling its consulting operations to French technology services group Cap Gemini for $11 billion.

"The computer industry is recognizing that the service business is where the margins are more favorable. It is not a commodity product business," said Allie Young, analyst at Dataquest, a technology research firm.

A spokesman for New York-based PricewaterhouseCoopers confirmed the discussions, but declined further comment.

A source familiar with the situation said the two companies had entered exclusive negotiations, but estimated it could be as long as six weeks before they reach a definitive agreement.

"There is nothing on paper yet, but there have been verbal assurances that PricewaterhouseCoopers won't talk to anybody else," said the source who declined to be identified.

Shares of Hewlett-Packard shares fell 4 5/8 to 117 on the New York Stock Exchange.

TITLE: Greens Look to Gas Crisis For Aid in Pollution Battle
AUTHOR: By Emma Thomasson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN - The pain felt by European motorists over soaring fuel prices might vindicate Green calls for the world to free itself from the bondage of fossil fuels.


But while consumers are still fuming at higher petrol prices, calls by European ecologist parties for taxes on fuel to discourage demand and boost energy efficiency are unlikely to bolster the Greens' already waning political fortunes.

"The Greens' core supporters are already behind ecological taxes, but the policy will certainly not win them any new friends," Manfred Guellner, an analyst from Germany's Forsa polling institute, told Reuters.

"They caught the spirit of the age at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, but their time is over."

The Greens, in government in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Finland, need not worry about losing support from aging hippies and schoolteachers over high petrol prices, caused by crude oil at $35 a barrel and high tax burdens.

But their larger Socialist and Social Democrat allies have more to fear from protests by angry truckers, and from motorists who may exact revenge at the ballot box.

France's Green environment minister, Dominique Voynet, has railed against concessions by Socialist premier Lionel Jospin to truckers and farmers who blocked fuel supplies for a week.

The Greens said the plan was short-sighted and repeated their demands to shift more freight from the roads to the railways. But their calls have fallen on deaf ears.

Voynet, one of two Green ministers in the Socialist-led left-wing cabinet, was not consulted on fuel tax cuts aimed at ending the blockades, despite threatening unspecified action if the concessions continued.

Germany's Greens, junior coalition partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroe der's center-left government, say high oil prices justify their call for more support for renewable-energy and energy- efficiency programs.

"The end of the age of oil is in sight," said Greens science spokesman Hans-Josef Fell. "Persistently high oil prices are the result of the world's oil starting to run out.

"A reduction of oil or ecology taxes would be completely the wrong signal, because it would mean that in the short term the incentive to save and convert would fall away."

The Greens have stuck to their guns on the controversial "ecology taxes" they pushed through on fuel last year, even though opinion polls show they may struggle to win the 5 percent of the vote they need to gain re-election in 2002.

For now, the German Greens have the backing of the SPD, which has so far resisted demands to back off from plans to increase fuel taxes each year through 2002 to fund transfers to the state pensions system.

"What would that lead to? If you do open these holes, what's to stop the oil companies and OPEC states filling them again? And what do you do when prices fall? Do you raise taxes to compensate?" SPD Deputy Economics Minister Siegmar Mosdorf said.

The picture has been similar in Belgium, where Greens Transport Minister Isabelle Durant has resisted pressure from two days of truckers' protests to ease fuel levies, although she has offered to ease payment terms.

"Lowering excise duties amounts to a knee-jerk reaction," Durant has said.

In Italy, where there is one Green minister in a multi-party left-wing coalition, the government has bowed to the transport lobby and channeled higher value-added-tax receipts to ease fuel prices.

TITLE: Bridgestone Boss Denies Tire Defects
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Bridgestone Corp.'s president said Monday that tires made at the company's U.S. subsidiary were not defective, though he acknowledged Bridgestone should have exercised greater quality control


"There was a problem that our control over overseas operations was insufficient," Yoichiro Kaizaki said in his first news conference since the company announced the recall of 6.5 million tires in the United States.

Kaizaki also said he was struck that there was a high accident rate only for Ford Explorers fitted with Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.'s tires - and not for other carmakers' vehicles that used the same products - though he stopped short of blaming the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker.

Kaizaki said Bridgestone let Firestone operate according to its own standards when it purchased the U.S. tiremaker in 1988 because Firestone already had an established headquarters and technical center.

While stressing that the differing standards in Japan and the United States in no way led to any tire problems, Kaizaki said his company should have brought the U.S. operations "up to Bridgestone's standards." He did not provide any specifics.

Bridgestone on Aug. 9 recalled 6.5 million tires suspected of shedding their tread at high speed and of causing at least 88 traffic deaths.

Many of the tires were made at the Bridgestone/Firestone factory in Decatur, Illinois and are standard equipment on some Ford models, including the popular Explorer sport utility vehicle.

Kaizaki has been criticized for disclosing little information about alleged defects in the company's P235/75R15-size ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires.

His silence has allowed Ford chief Jacques Nasser to try to pin blame for the problem on Firestone tires rather than on possible Ford design flaws.

Kaizaki said, however, that the cause of the accidents has not yet been determined and pointed out that other carmakers have had fewer problems with the same tires.

"We didn't recall the tires because we found a defect that caused the accidents," Kaizaki said. "We decided to conscientiously recall the tires having put a top priority on consumer safety."

He said that underinflation of tires or poor maintenance are known to be potential causes of the tread-belt separations and punctures suspected in the accidents and that no structural flaws have been found in the tires themselves.

When asked if he thought Ford might be responsible, he replied: "I can't answer that."

TITLE: Belgian Truckers Rally Against Fuel Prices
AUTHOR: By Gilles Castonguay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS - Belgian truckers demanding cheaper fuel brought Brussels streets to a standstill on Monday and growing protests in Britain led Prime Minister Tony Blair to vow he would not give in to demands for fuel-tax cuts.


In France most truck blockades were cleared over the weekend, but only after concessions to protesters which could increase pressure on other European governments to do the same.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, faced with the threat of nationwide protests, agreed to meet truck drivers on Wednesday. The association representing Ireland's 4,000 truckers threatened protest action on Friday and next Monday if the government does not accept its demand for a 20-percent cut in diesel duty.

In Britain, some petrol stations ran dry after panic buying triggered by a truckers' blockade of a refinery. The British Chambers of Commerce said protest was even more damaging to industry than high fuel prices and urged a temporary tax cut to end the crisis.

The Brussels protest wrought havoc with morning rush-hour traffic, forcing thousands to take detours to work or to leave their cars at home and take a bus or subway.

Defiant truck drivers parked their vehicles across streets, hampering access to government buildings and European Union offices. The drivers, many of whom had driven from southern Belgium, sounded their horns and stood by their rigs drinking coffee and munching croissants.

Riot police vans were parked in adjoining streets but did not interfere with the peaceful protest.

More than 2,000 trucks, buses and taxis converged on Brussels on Sunday as part of a wave of demonstrations across Europe against rising fuel prices.

As angry truckers and farmers mounted blockades at some of Britain's oil depots and refineries, motorists rushed to the pumps in panic, triggering shortages in parts of the country.

In stark contrast to French policy, Britain's Labor government said it would not be bullied into cutting energy taxes and expected police to intervene to ensure that petrol flowed to the pumps.

"We cannot and we will not alter government policy on petrol through blockades and pickets. That is not the way to make policy in Britain and as far as I'm concerned it never will be," Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

The government of French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin gave in to protesters demands with a 15-percent fuel tax cut. Most blockades of French oil refineries and depots were lifted on Sunday, ending a week of protests that paralyzed the nation.

TITLE: Yukos Signs Baltic Agreement
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Lithuanian oil concern Mazheikiu Nafta and Russia's No. 2 oil firm Yukos said Friday they had signed a five-year deal to send an annual 4 million metric tons of crude exports through the Butinge Baltic Sea terminal.


The deal represents a substantial portion of Yukos' production; last year it reported production of 44.5 million tons and says it will produce between 46.6 million tons and 50 million tons this year.

Mazheikiu Nafta, one-third owned by U.S. Williams International, is a combined refinery, oil terminal and pipeline transportation system. The Butinge terminal's annual crude export capacity is 8 million tons.

"We are extremely satisfied that it has been possible to reach a mutually beneficial agreement with Russia's second-largest oil company and look forward to developing our long-term relationship further," Jim Scheel, Mazheikiu managing director, was quoted as saying in a statement.

Securing crude supplies is crucial to Mazheikiu. The refinery was forced into several costly shutdowns last year due to irregular Russian crude shipments.

Russia, which has no oil port on the Baltic Sea and mainly uses the Latvian port of Ventspils, is building an oil terminal at Primorsk, near St. Petersburg.

The port is part of the Baltic Pipeline System, which will carry oil from northern Russia's Timan-Pechora region where the nation's No. 1 oil firm LUKoil is dominant, and from western Siberia.

The pipeline system is to begin operations next year, but already questions are being raised about whether it will secure enough supplies to be financially viable. Yukos' commitment to Mazhei kiu will not reassure Transneft, the pipeline system's owner.

LUKoil is building a fleet of tankers to take its crude from Timan-Pechora by sea, which will also reduce the amount of oil available to the Baltic pipeline.

Mazheikiu Nafta is also in negotiations with LUKoil concerning the formation of a joint marketing alliance in the Baltic States, Poland and CIS expected to secure another 6 million tons of crude for the refinery.

However, Williams International president John Bumgarner said it was unlikely that any final agreements with LUKoil could be reached in the next round of talks, now scheduled for late next week.

"Probably not. I wouldn't expect one quite that fast. There's more work to do," Bumgarner told reporters.

He was speaking after meeting with Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius and Economics Minister Valentinas Milaknis to discuss the negotiations with Russian crude suppliers and international financial organizations about loans for the reconstruction and modernization of Mazheikiu.


(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Russian Bank Wins Case Against the 'Prague Pirate'
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NASSAU, Bahamas - A Bahamian court has ordered Czech financier Viktor Kozeny to pay $6.8 million to a Russian bank that accused him of reneging on a credit agreement.


Kozeny, dubbed the "Prague Pirate" for cashing in on the first wave of Czech privatization with an investment scheme, lives in the Bahamas, where his assets were frozen by court order earlier this year.

Other lush Kozeny homes in Aspen, Colorado, and London, have also been ordered frozen by a British court overseeing legal claims involving a $450-million oil deal in Azerbaijan that soured.

The ruling, released by Kozeny's attorneys on Thursday, found in favor of the Commercial Innovation Alfa Bank, which claimed he had reneged on full payment of a $35-million credit facility. But acting judge David Hayton stayed the order pending appeal.

Kozeny's lawyers have appealed the ruling, meaning Kozeny, 36, will almost certainly have to appear in the Bahamas Court of Appeal later this year or early next year for questioning on his financial position.

In court, the Russian bank claimed Kozeny stopped making payments on the credit facility, and it had therefore tried to retrieve its cash through the Moscow courts.

But, the bank claimed, Kozeny made no effort to defend his actions and the courts had to defer judgment. An application was then made for a summary judgment in the Bahamas' courts.

Kozeny said the outstanding sum was the responsibility of a company, Audia Investments, that took on the role of borrower.

Kozeny, who was unavailable for comment, was also ordered to pay the bank's costs.

As the founder of Harvard Investment funds, Kozeny also faces claims by insurance giant American International Group Inc. and other clients in a failed attempt to buy control of the state oil company of Azerbaijan. American investors put $450 million into the deal.

TITLE: New Russian Pipe Producer Offers Gazprom Discounts
AUTHOR: By Vladislav Maximov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government has told natural-gas monopoly Gaz prom to order large-diameter pipes for major gas pipelines from the planned $800-million to $1-billion Mill-5,000 project. 


In order to persuade the company to make the largest possible order, the Nizhny Tagil Metal Combine, on the grounds of which the mill is to be built, is promising to sell the pipes for 20 percent less than their international price.

Gazprom has been importing its large-diameter pipes from Ukraine, Japan and other countries at $1,000 per ton, not including customs costs.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Friday instructed the combine to prepare to dispatch to Gazprom within three days a proposal for delivery volumes, and a projected price list for the Mill-5,000 project up to 2010, said Tatyana Razbash, Kasyanov's press secretary. 

In addition, Gazprom, which is about 38 percent state-owned, was instructed to determine its need for large-diameter pipes for construction and repairs in the next decade and to send a report to the government. 

Mill-5,000 is a project for the making of plate steel and large-diameter pipelines, mainly for Gazprom. The planned output is initially planned at 600,000 tons of pipes and 400,000 tons of rolled iron. When the second stage is introduced, output may be increased to 1 million tons of piping and 500,000 tons of rolled steel. It is expected that the project will pay for itself in its first four years. Construction is due to end in 2003.

Gazprom has not taken on any specific obligations, either for financing construction of the mill or for orders. 

"If there are pipes, there'll be orders," is how Gazprom representatives have replied to questions about Mill-5,000. Now the government has decided to get more specific guarantees out of Gazprom.

The nation's largest metals factories have been vying for Mill-5,000 for about six months. 

An expert committee of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, which is conducting the tender has given preference to the Nizhny Tagil Metal Combine. And on April 21, a government instruction was signed under which a company "for producing large-diameter pipes," would be established in Nizhny Tagil. 

The state and the combine are each to own a 25-percent-plus-one blocking stake in the plant while the remainder will be offered to investors and project contractors.

"We aren't asking Gazprom to finance the project; we won't have to count on that. What we need are guaranteed orders," said Mikhail Arshansky, deputy general director of the Nizhny Tagil Combine. 

Arshansky said the combine is counting on selling no less than 500,000 tons to gas companies per year.

TITLE: Illarionov: Investment Increase Is Both 'Natural and Expected'
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Investment is up 17 percent for the first half of the year and is up 30 percent in capital and industrial projects, Interfax quoted President Vla di mir Putin's chief economic adviser as saying Friday.


Andrei Illarionov did not name the sources of the investment or the amounts invested.

The news agency said that Illarionov - who also represents Russia in its dealings with international lending institutions and the Group of Seven leading industrial nations - was speaking at a round table discussion on national investment policies in St. Petersburg.

Illarionov said both local and foreign investment had increased, with foreign investment up 11 percent in the first half of the year - "a solid indicator."

He said the market for investment funds grew 33 percent in dollar terms, which showed "an increase in investment in corporate bonds," adding that "all this is a natural and expected result of economic growth." 

Illarionov said it was a big plus that the flow of investment was "not as great as it could have been if we have preserved the broad economic and political polices that are the seeds of a default."

A huge flow of hot money could lead to strong destabilizing influence on the economy, he added.

"The current rate of investment growth is in line with the rate of economic growth; the result of this will be more healthy economic development."

TITLE: 4 EU Leaders Comment on Challenges That Lie Ahead
AUTHOR: By Tony Blair, Wim Kok, Goran Persson and Gerhard Schroeder
TEXT: THE agenda for this week's meeting of the UN Millennium Summit is daunting. Development, conflict, drugs, AIDS - all require sustained policy innovation. But we believe a consensus is emerging on the right framework to build a global order based on equal worth and social fairness. Our challenge is to implement what we already know to be right, as well as to develop new solutions. 


Last June in Berlin, 14 heads of government from Europe, the Americas, South Africa and New Zealand signed a unique political document. The Berlin Communique brought together politicians of the center-left to forge a new progressive agenda. Although our four countries are part of many historical networks, we are today also part of a bigger political family - of renewed, modernized progressive politics. Our values endure, but our approach is radically reformed. We all embrace the potential of globalization. In fact, our shared political conversation symbolized political globalization. 

But we're also committed to tackling the clear problems that come in its wake. For us, there are three foundations for global progress. First, we must widen the winners' circle in the new economy. This is socially right but also economically important. Sound macroeconomic policy is necessary but insufficient. We need active government, doing not the job of business, but instead empowering our citizens to enter the labor market, develop their skills, set up businesses of their own. Education is key: In all our countries, it's the top investment priority. 

And for those of us brought up under the influence of successful postwar welfare policy, it must be supported by continued modernization of welfare states. Welfare policy must be more than a safety net; it must also be dedicated to active help that promotes work and independence, and prevents problems rather than simply providing a palliative to them.

Second, we must strengthen civil society, a check against both overweening government and untrammeled market power. The underlying values should be clear: an open, inclusive society, based on responsibilities as well as rights. There are those who will seek to exploit the population movements that are part of globalization to stir up fear and hatred. We are determined to stand against anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. 

We also recognize that one of the most corrosive influences on a community's health is crime. We're determined to use all the tools at our disposal, from effective community policing to the latest DNA technology, to tackle crime and its causes.

Third, we are committed to a new international social compact. In an increasingly interdependent world, the aims of wider prosperity and strengthening of civil society cannot be pursued within the nation-state alone. Not only do problems cross national borders, the pursuit of self-interest in one part of the world may be disastrous for another.

The key for development is to establish a virtuous circle between laudable aims that too often are pursued in isolation: debt relief, conflict prevention, trade promotion, educational and health investment, environmental enhancement. As for debt relief, rich countries have promises to fulfill, while developing countries must show that the poor will benefit. Similarly, we must find a way through the legitimate debate about how to ensure that free trade supports development and employee rights. In fields like the environment, we should seek to bind together the interests of developed and developing countries and use innovative new mechanisms like emissions-trading schemes to curb pollution. 

This is an ambitious agenda - and rightly so. It is based on clear values and judging by the meeting in Berlin, it has increasing support. This is significant. 

Ten years ago, at the end of the Cold War, people talked about the end of the left, even the end of politics. Ten years on, progressive politics has been liberated from old attitudes. In our four countries, the left-of-center parties have brought stability to public finances, tackled social exclusion, pioneered reform as well as investment in public services and are now engaging with the construction of a reformed European social model. The results speak for themselves: falling unemployment, rising investment, improving standards in health and education services.

We are proud of these achievements, but not satisfied. Big challenges lie ahead. The protection of our environment, incorporating all that scientific advancement has to offer, looms as a massive responsibility for our generation. As leaders of four member states of the European Union, we recognize the need for the EU itself to reform and move forward. We are committed to help Europe become the most dynamic, knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010, through reforms in capital, product and labor markets. European countries are collaborating more closely in new fields like crime, asylum and defense. And a huge challenge for the EU is to embrace new members in central and eastern Europe. This requires institutional change to ensure the EU lives up to its potential. 

In this, we are greatly strengthened by the new progressive network that has come into being. Within Europe and beyond, we can and must learn from our diverse experience. Nevertheless, we find remarkable similarity in our political debates. And it's important to acknowledge the role U.S. President Bill Clinton has played in fostering the new progressive dialog. 

We learn from one another's ideas and we explain to our voters that they're part of a larger project to ensure that in a changing world, government promotes opportunity and security for all. Some people and countries will always be able to take care of themselves. But we have a wider responsibility. We cannot stop change, but we can shape it for the benefit of the many, not the few.


Tony Blair is prime minister of the United Kingdom; Wim Kok is prime minister of the Netherlands; Goran Persson is prime minister of Sweden; and Gerhard Schroeder is chancellor of Germany. They contributed this comment to The Washington Post.

TITLE: Palestinian Statehood On Hold
AUTHOR: By Jeffrey Heller
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JERUSALEM - A Palestinian decision to delay declaring an independent state for at least two months has kept alive prospects of further peace talks with Israel.


But nationalist pressures on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's domestic political woes and an approaching U.S. presidential election means the shutters might slam shut soon on any window of opportunity.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said on Sunday peace talks were now expected to resume with Israel on Tuesday and should last four to five weeks. There was no official Israeli word on negotiations.

"We decided to give peace a chance," said Sakher Habash, a member of the Palestinian Central Council, or PCC, that decided at the end of a two-day session in Gaza to postpone an independence declaration at least until Nov. 15.

Israel welcomed the delay, attributing the decision to world pressure on Arafat not to make a unilateral move that would draw Israeli countermeasures and possibly lead to an eruption of violence.

Barak, due back in Israel on Monday from New York where President Clinton held separate, inconclusive talks with the Israeli leader and Arafat, sounded downbeat about prospects for a final peace agreement.

"It takes two to tango," he told U.S. Jewish leaders in New York. "If there is no ripe partner on the other side, we will know it as well and we will know how to deploy ourselves for the alternatives."

Both sides failed to clinch an accord at a 15-day summit at Camp David in July that foundered largely over the emotive issue of the future of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Israeli and Palestinian officials also have voiced doubts about prospects for negotiating an agreement as the November U.S. presidential elections draw nearer and Clinton fades further from the political limelight.

Deadlines have come and gone in the peace process that began with an interim self-rule agreement in Oslo in 1993. The Sept. 15 target date, which falls this Wednesday, for a deal was no exception.

Arafat had pledged to declare a state as early as Wednesday. In the end, he left the decision up to the Palestinian mini-parliament - dropping what Palestinian officials said were heavy hints along the way that he preferred a postponement.

The PCC said in a statement it would now reconvene by Nov. 15 to consider when to declare the state and that final preparations for statehood should be completed by then.

In Damascus, two radical Palestinian groups - the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - criticized the delay in announcing statehood.

"Israel wants the establishment of an unarmed Palestinian state which is deprived of the right to sign any defensive deals with any of its Arab neighboring countries, in addition to the cancellation of Palestinian refugees' rights to return to their homes," DFLP leader Nayef Hawatmeh said.

TITLE: Storms Leave Thousands Homeless in Vietnam
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HANOI, Vietnam - Tropical storm Wukong slammed into Vietnam's midsection over the weekend, killing two people and leaving more than 10,000 homeless, officials said Monday.


Heavy rains and strong winds reaching 120 kilometers per hour hit central Ha Tinh province early Sunday, destroying about 3,500 houses, said Bui Hong Phong of the provincial flood and storm control bureau.

A telephone company employee was washed away by a flash flood and another person was killed when his house collapsed, Phong said. Twenty-nine people were injured.

More than 1,000 soldiers were dispatched Sunday to reinforce several sections of the sea dike system washed out by high tides, Phong said. About 20 communes along the coast were briefly inundated by over 1 1/2 meters of sea water. The homeless have taken shelter at local churches, schools or with neighbors, he said.

Weather forecasters said heavy rains are likely to continue in the central provinces of Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh for the next several days. Local authorities are sending delegations to the affected areas to assess damage. In Nghe An and Quang Binh provinces, nearly 2,000 homes were damaged by the storm.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are still being evacuated in the flood-stricken southern delta provinces of Dong Thap, An Giang and Long An. Water levels there continue to approach the height of the 1996 flood levels that killed 150 people, officials said.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Italian Floods Kill 11


SOVERATO, Italy (AP) - Hundreds of workers and police units were searching for missing people among the debris Monday, a day after the rain-swollen waters of a stream swept away a campground in southern Italy, killing at least 11 people.

At least four people were missing, civil defense official Salvatore Mottola said. The chances of finding them alive were "virtually nil," he said.

The sun came out again in southern Italy on Monday after a weekend of heavy rains which left several hamlets there isolated and caused massive floods along the country's coastline.

Before dawn Sunday, a mudslide hit Le Giare campground near the seaside town of Soverato. It turned the site into a sea of mud, flipping over cars, shoving trailers into trees and smashing bungalows.

The campground was filled with disabled people who were vacationing there with their volunteer aides. The muddy waters destroyed the camp ground's guest register, complicating the task of accounting for the living, the dead and the missing. 



Chile Coup Memorial


SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Thousands of Chileans marched in a downpour Sunday to recall the 27th anniversary of the bloody coup led by Gen. Augusto Pi no chet, demanding the former dictator be brought to trial.

Amid a heavy police presence, the demonstrators walked four kilometers from downtown Santiago to the cemetery where Salvador Allende, the Marxist president who committed suicide during the coup against him, lies buried.

Cold and a steady rain did not dampen the spirits of the leftists, human rights activists and families of those who died during Pinochet's dictatorship, many of whom carried banners demanding his prosecution. Police said between 4,000 and 5,000 people took part in the march.

The way was opened this summer to the possibility of a Pinochet trial - something long viewed as inconceivable - when the general was stripped of the immunity from prosecution that he enjoyed as a senator for life. The Supreme Court announced in August that it upheld a lower court decision to end the immunity.



Malaysians Kidnapped


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Four heavily armed gunmen kidnapped three Malaysians from a resort island off Borneo and fled in a speedboat toward the southern Philippines, Malaysia's deputy prime minister said Monday. The attack occurred Sunday night near another Malaysian resort island where Abu Sayyaf separatist rebels from the Philippines kidnapped 21 people, including foreign tourists, four months ago and took them to Jolo island in the southern Philippines.

During the attack at Pasir Dive Resort at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday, four men armed with M-16 rifles took the staff by surprise and fired two shots in the air. They then robbed the resort and fled in their speedboat. For hours, Malaysian authorities searched nearby jungles to see if the three missing Malaysians had fled and were hiding.

But on Monday afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that police had confirmed the gunmen had taken the three Malaysians hostage. He said authorities believed the hostage-takers might be foreigners, as they spoke a variation of the Malay language common to residents of the southern Philippines.



Hostages Freed


MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - Four Europeans held captive by Muslim rebels for months in a southern jungle left the Philippines on Monday for Libya, where they will be formally handed over to their governments.

Finns Seppo Juhani Franti and Risto Mirco Vahanen, German Marc Wallert and Frenchman Stephane Loisy were freed by the Abu Sayyaf rebels on the island of Jolo on Saturday.

Since then, they have been in a luxury hotel in the central Philippines, hoping they might be joined by two French television journalists still held hostage. But negotiators said the release of these two captives has been delayed by a gunbattle between rival rebel factions in which at least three people were killed.

The four freed captives were among 21 people kidnapped from Malaysia's Sipadan resort island on Easter Sunday, April 23. All but one Filipino, a resort worker, have been freed.



Lee Wins in Hong Kong


HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's Democratic Party, an outspoken critic of communist China, returned as the single largest group in the legislature on Monday but with its strength eroded by its pro-Beijing rival in weekend elections.

Led by lawyer Martin Lee, the Democratic Party won 12 seats in the 60-member chamber in Sunday's polls, down from 13 in the last election in 1998, while the pro-China Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) took 11 seats, up from 10.

But complex electoral rules ensured that the chamber remained dominated by pro-establishment and pro-Beijing forces, with the various pro-democracy parties commanding only 20 seats, unchanged from 1998.

Just 24 seats were directly elected and 36 were decided by professional, business and citizen groups as well as mostly pro-Beijing politicians.



Yacht Hits Tanker


COPENHAGEN, Denmark (Reuters) - Up to seven people were feared drowned after a Polish yacht collided with a tanker and then sank off Denmark's northwest coast on Sunday, Danish authorities said.

One of eight people aboard the yacht, a 19-year-old woman, was rescued while the bodies of two passengers were recovered and five were missing, the Danish maritime rescue center (SOK) told Reuters.

The 14-meter yacht with an all-Polish crew was sailing north and the 4,000-ton Japanese-owned, Hong Kong-registered gas tanker was headed south to Rotterdam when they collided at 6 a.m. in fair weather.

The tanker's crew will be questioned by Dutch police on Monday, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten reported on its Internet Web site.

The surviving woman, the only female on board, was the training yacht's Polish helmsman. She was in good condition.

Helicopters and several boats took part in the search around the North Sea site of the sinking, some 20 nautical miles (37 kilometers) southwest of the coastal town of Thyboroen.

TITLE: British Hostages Set Free In Raid
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Britain is reviewing security for its forces in Sierra Leone in case of revenge attacks by rebels after a weekend raid freed six British soldiers held captive by rebels in the jungle of the West African state.


A lightning raid on Sunday by 150 British soldiers, including paratroopers, freed the six members of the Royal Irish Regiment and a Sierra Leonean officer held hostage by the self-styled West Side Boys since Aug. 25.

One of the British servicemen taking part in the raid was killed in fighting, in which military sources said 25 rebels were killed and 18 captured, including a key commander.

Military sources said 12 British soldiers were also wounded, one seriously.

In London, defense sources said Britain was reviewing its overall security in the former British colony as a precaution against revenge attacks by the West Side Boys.

"If we feel additional precautions need to be taken, then they will be implemented," one source said.

But they said the rescue operation did not affect Britain's attitude toward Sierra Leone, where a special unit of British soldiers is training the new Sierra Leone Army following a 1999 peace deal to end a civil war that has rumbled on since 1991.

The British hostages had been members of the unit. Five other British soldiers taken at the same time had been released earlier by the rebels.

Defense sources said the British assault troops backed by five helicopters staged the dawn raid against around 200 rebels at their base in an area of jungle and swamp east of the capital Freetown.

The rescued British soldiers were aboard a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel in Freetown, where they received medical checks and were being debriefed before flying home, officials said.

British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon said the decision to mount the rescue followed repeated threats by the maverick group to kill their captives and when it became clear that the West Side Boys' negotiators were making unreasonable demands.

"The captors had threatened repeatedly to kill the hostages, and indeed we understand that mock executions had taken place," he said.

The operation was a further demonstration of the refusal of successive British governments to make deals with "terrorists" and hostage takers, he added.

Defense sources in London described the assault as a two-pronged helicopter attack against two rebel camps simultaneously.

They estimated 50 to 60 rebels were north of a river running through the area, with another group to the south covering them with heavy machine-gun fire. Some of the rebels pulled back to the edge of the jungle when they were attacked.

The sources said the operation lasted about 90 minutes and at time firing was very heavy. The hostages had been rescued and were on their way out by helicopter within 20 minutes of the start of the raid.

The defense sources said the raiding troops also recovered three vehicles that were lost when the hostages were originally captured.

Some of the helicopters were used to provide fire support during the raid, the sources said.

TITLE: North Korean Visit Seen as Positive Sign for Unification
AUTHOR: By Paul Shin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - A North Korean emissary began a visit to South Korea on Monday, expressing hope that his trip would help thaw relations on the world's last Cold War frontier.


Kim Yong Sun, heading a delegation of eight, brought along a truckload of mushrooms for South Korean government, business and media officials as a gift from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The mushrooms were meant to celebrate Chusok, or Korean thanksgiving day, which falls on Tuesday.

"I've come to Seoul with a strong yearning of our people for unification," Kim Yong Sun said upon his arrival at Kimpo Airport.

"I hope our delegation's visit will create a new, big momentum for national unification," Kim Yong Sun said.

The four-day visit represents yet another symbol of warming ties on the divided Korean peninsula following an unprecedented June summit between the sides' leaders.

South Korean officials are attaching great significance to Kim Yong Sun's visit. He heads the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a semiofficial organization that handles the North's policy with South Korea and other nations that have no formal ties with the reclusive communist North. He also serves as a close adviser to Kim Jong Il and was the only North Korean official who sat in on the June summit with the two leaders.

While in South Korea, Kim Yong Sun was expected to pay a courtesy call to President Kim Dae-jung, visit several cultural sites and inspect some industrial facilities, Seoul officials said.

An important talking point is expected to be Kim Jong Il's promised visit to South Korea. After the summit in Pyongyang, the North Korean leader said he was obliged to visit Seoul.

Athletes from the two Koreas will march under a reunification banner at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Olympic officials announced Sunday.

TITLE: GLOBAL EYE
TEXT: Working Vocabulary


As America paused this week to celebrate its working class (oops, sorry; as we all know, there are no classes in the land of the free and the home of the Ivy League-legacy presidential candidates), a list of some of the more esoteric "Official Occupational Titles" surfaced in Harper's Magazine. The titles were drawn up by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration - which means that somebody, somewhere, actually holds these jobs.


Some of the titles are quite straightforward, although the jobs themselves might be a bit hard to envision as a lifelong career. "Cookie Breaker," for example, "Bologna Lacer," "Dice Spotter" or the perhaps overly descriptive "Pantyhose-Crotch-Closing Machine Operator." But these positions blaze like beacons of professional excitement next to jobs as a "Seed-Potato Arranger" or "Wall Attendant," while a few titles are simply inscrutable: what exactly does a "Prize Jacker" do, or a "Powder Nipper," or the vaguely erotic "Sea-Foam-Kiss Maker"?

Several of the jobs actually sound more like biting insults than appellations of gainful employment. Try leveling a few of these at your antagonist the next time your dander is up: "Puddler," Slimer," "Butt Maker," "Egg Smeller," "Worm-Bed Attendant," or the truly devastating "Wad Impregnator." (What on God's green earth could that job be? Maybe we don't want to know.)

Surprisingly, the list also contains job titles that pertain to the nation's leading figures. For example, you'd think Bill Clinton would be busy enough as president and all, but the ETA has obviously listed some of Clinton's other occupations: "Nibbler Operator," for one, along with "Belly Roller," "Bosom Presser," "Neck Feller," "Chicken Fancier," and the tres presidential "Pickle Pumper."

The would-be (but increasingly likely perhaps-not) president, George W. Bush, is also well represented in the list. Although the 54-year-old frat boy has somehow acquired a reputation as a lazy, featherbedding, servant-coddled, adviser-led, silver-spooned aristocrat, it is obvious from a glance at the ETA list that l'il George is actually quite the go-getter. In addition to his part-time posts as governor and chief executioner of Texas, Bush is holding down jobs as a "Crown Pouncer," "Finger Waver," "Stereotyper," "Smearer," "Side Splitter" (those eloquent speeches), and, of course, his life-long, full-time avocation and labor of love, "Napper."

As his poll numbers continue to dive, however, Republican leaders (who, in their choice of candidate, were no doubt working collectively as a "Barrel Scraper"), may be viewing their fair-haired boy more and more as a "Marshmellow Runner."

Maybe he ought to look into that crotch-closing machine thing after the election.



Hate Potion No. 9


Speaking of barrel scrapers, this week Pope John Paul II revived one of the most ancient and venerable occupations of his exalted position:


Jew baiter.

It seems that the promiscuous Pope - who has created more saints during his tenure than all of his predecessors combined - has now beatified Pope Pius IX, the infamous 19th-century pontiff who routinely and with great relish gave the boot to those whom John Paul now likes to call "our elder brothers in the faith." Pius, who referred to Jews as "dogs" (but in a very Christian, loving way, of course), also herded the "elder brethren" into Europe's last Jewish ghetto (until the Nazis came along).

Pius IX is perhaps best known for two acts of Christ-like humility. First, he kidnapped a 6-year-old Jewish boy, who had been surreptitiously baptized by his Christian nurse, and kept the boy from his family, eventually enrolling him in the priesthood. Second, it was Pius who proclaimed the doctrine of papal infallibility (the kind of thing you need to do if you're going to smooth over crimes like, say, kidnapping). One can only assume, charitably, that it is the latter, not the former, that so recommended Pius to his 21st-century successor.

Beatification is the last step before sainthood, so it shouldn't be long until Pius IX joins that other notorious anti-Semite who was of late enthroned in the Lord's own skybox: Nicholas II.



Rear-End Collision


In light of George W.'s sissy-salty comments about New York Times reporter Adam Clymer this week, deep thinkers from around the world are gathering for a special conclave in Athens to ponder this enduring philosophical question:


Is it better to be a "major league asshole" or a "minor league dimbulb"?



Wedding Bell Blues


But while George W. Bush tries to explain his potty mouth to his "favorite political philosopher" - Jesus W. Christ - the legal authorities over in Georgia have found themselves tied up in knots by their contradictory attempts to force "Christian family values" on the populace at large.


Summer Strickland, 21, is facing 20 years in the pen for having sex with the father of her own child. The married mother was charged last week with felony statutory rape for a bout of connubial bliss with her husband, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

We would of course give you the name of Summer's husband, but we can't: He's just 14 years old. And therein lies the legal snag. Summer and her teeny-pop were married on August 7, a month after the baby was born. Georgia law, which seeks to foster the Christian ideal of marriage at all costs, allows any couple to marry if they have performed the God-ordained function of reproduction.

However, because the Georgians also wish to uproot the devilish practice of unsanctified sex, it is unlawful to conjugate with anyone under the age of 16 who is not one's spouse. And since the hubba-hubba that led to the blessed event clearly occurred before the Aug. 7 marriage (which, we might add, could not itself have occurred had the couple not had sex and produced a baby), prosecutors are readying their statutory rape case against Strickland, said Rockdale County District Attorney Richard Read.

"Regardless of what their relationship was, the boy is still a minor," Read said. "We'll try to determine exactly what happened."

Gee, Dick, it seems pretty clear "exactly what happened," doesn't it? Maybe the God-fearing Georgia lawmakers need some remedial lessons in Human Biology 101.